Shanti Parikh

Shanti Parikh is a Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology and Chair of African and African-American Studies at Washington University. She holds a PhD from Yale University and has dual appointments in Anthropology and African/African-American Studies, with courtesy appointments in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Urban Studies. Her research focuses on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and capitalism, particularly in Uganda, examining how global health interventions shape local realities. Current projects include an ethnography on black masculinity along the TransAfrica Highway and studies of commercial sex in HIV hotspots.

Her work critiques how HIV/AIDS policies inadvertently increase women’s vulnerability through marital sex norms. Notable publications include Regulating Romance (2015) and The Secret: Love Marriage and HIV (2009). She has held leadership roles in Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program and T.H. Eliot Residential College. Courses are cross-listed in International Studies and American Cultural Studies.

Research methodologies combine ethnography with active engagement in public health debates, emphasizing anthropology’s role in critiquing development practices. Current research explores infidelity’s role in HIV transmission and the social history of post-colonial Ugandan sexuality.