Stacey A. Langwick

Stacey A. Langwick is a cultural and medical anthropologist at Cornell University, where she holds a joint position in the Department of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. An active member of Cornell's Global Health Program and Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, she leads the Qualities of Life working group at the Einaudi Center while co-organizing the Ecological Learning Collaboratory and Translating Vitalities international collective.

• Education:
  • PhD in Anthropology (UNC Chapel Hill)
  • Master of Public Health (UNC Chapel Hill)
  • Bachelor of Arts (Agnes Scott College)

Her groundbreaking research examines healing practices in East Africa, particularly Tanzania, focusing on toxicity, ontological politics, and plant-based sovereignty. Through ethnographic studies of dawa lishe (nutritious medicine) and mlonge tree therapies, she challenges conventional boundaries between food/medicine, traditional/modern, and human/non-human.

Current publications like "Properties of (Dis)Possession" (2021) and "Groundwork for Planetary Health" (2022) reveal how Tanzanian healers navigate neoliberal restructuring while cultivating postcolonial knowledge production. Earlier works including "Bodies, Politics and African Healing" (2011) established her as a leading voice in medical anthropology's ontological turn.

• Major Awards:
  • Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship
  • Multiple grants from NSF, Wenner-Gren, and Fulbright

Langwick actively bridges art and anthropology through the Johnson Art Museum collaboration and Moshi medical school garden project. She mentors medical students in Tanzania while co-leading the Uzima Collective, a transnational group of scholars, clinicians, and artists reimagining 21st-century medicine.