About

Jan Brunson is an anthropologist (Ph.D. Brown University) specializing in discourses on “maternal health” and “population.”  Her research intertwines medical anthropology, critical demography, and cultural studies of science, technology, and medicine.  She has conducted ethnographic research in Nepal for over a decade on global projects of inventory and intervention alongside Nepali women’s projects of reproduction and family making.  Her portfolio includes studies of family planning discourses, reproductive health in resource-poor and disaster settings, and the standardization of time in obstetrics.  Brunson served as the Chair of the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction from 2015 to 2017.  Her first book, Planning Families in Nepal: Global and Local Projects of Reproduction (2016), offers an account of Hindu Nepali women as they negotiate conflicting global and local ideals regarding reproduction.  She recently co-edited the International Handbook on Gender and Demographic Processes (2018), and her articles appear in a variety of scholarly journals including Social Science & Medicine, Ethnos, and Maternal and Child Health Journal.  Brunson is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.