Jan Brunson is an anthropologist (Ph.D. Brown University) of global health discourses on reproduction, maternal health, and population. Her research intertwines medical anthropology, critical demography, and cultural studies of science, technology, and medicine. Brunson’s ethnographic research in Nepal on global projects of inventory and intervention alongside Nepali women’s projects of reproduction and family making spans two decades. Her portfolio includes studies of global health and empowerment campaigns targeting women in the Global South, maternal health in resource-poor and disaster settings, maternal health metrics, motherhood during revolution, women’s autonomy and spatial mobility, cesarean sections, and helicopter emergency medical services. Brunson served as the Chair of the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction from 2015 to 2017 and the Chair of the Critical Anthropology of Global Health from 2026 to 2028. 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 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, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Journal of Critical Public Health, Ethnos, and Maternal and Child Health Journal. As a Fulbright US Scholar in Nepal 2024-2025, she explored “local” indications for cesarean sections in collaboration with a leading rural hospital. Brunson is currently the Bilmes Endowed Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
