Susan Erikson

Susan Erikson is an SFU Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, where she examines global health through the lens of political economy, financialization, and datafication. Her ethnographic research in Germany and Sierra Leone investigates how anticipatory technologies and financing mechanisms reshape health governance and equity across diverse settings.

Education

• BA, English and Education, Boston College, with honors
• Cert, Organizational Development, Georgetown University
• MA, Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder
• PhD, Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder

Her research interrogates the transformation of health data from accountability tools into financial assets, revealing how speculative instruments like pandemic bonds reconfigure health priorities. She analyzes the political economies that produce health inequalities, emphasizing local sovereignty and the social production of health metrics through long-term fieldwork in West Africa and Europe.

Publications demonstrate consistent focus on Ebola response data systems, prenatal diagnostics, and financialization trends, showing how digital health technologies often exacerbate inequities while creating new investment opportunities. Her work connects granular ethnographic detail with macro-level analysis of global health governance structures.

Scientific Awards

• Graduate Teaching and Mentorship Excellence Award (2012)
• Michael Hayes Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Service (2020)
• Society for Medical Anthropology's Virchow Prize (2013)
• SMA's Basker Prize (2012) for contributed chapter
• SMA Council for Anthropology of Reproduction book awards (2006, 2012)
• Mercator Fellowship from DFG Priority Program 1448 (2016)
• Senior Fellow at Käte Hamburger Kolleg (2014-2015)
• DAAD Visiting Research Faculty (2006)
• Mellon Foundation Faculty Fellow (2023)

Though not currently accepting new students, she has mentored researchers studying maternal health metrics, polio eradication data, and tobacco medicine. Her work receives substantial funding from major international agencies supporting critical analysis of health systems.

Grant Funding

• SSHRC: Finance Matters and Following the Money projects
• NSF: Global health political economy research
• Mellon Foundation: Digital Democracies Institute fellowship
• Wenner-Gren Foundation, Volkswagen Foundation, DFG, Norwegian Research Council

She co-founded the Cascadia Seminar for medical anthropology and leads the SSHRC-funded Desirable/Undesirable Health Futures project with Sierra Leonean and European collaborators, developing critical frameworks for planetary health governance.