Welcome
Some basic background stuff about me: I am a Regents Professor and a President's Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University (ASU), where I previously directed the School for many years and founded and continue to direct the Center for Global Health. At ASU, I teach undergraduate anthropology and global health and train advanced students interested in careers in or beyond the academy. I am also Senior Editor (Medical Anthropology) for the journal Social Science and Medicine.
Trained in human biology, demography, and medical anthropology, I usually describe myself as a "biocultural" anthropologist. My current efforts are focused on understanding the dynamics and consequences of moralized classifications like "dirty," "diseased", or "weed." This has two main lines of inquiry:
- Understanding how people are using the new GLP-1 RA "weight loss drugs" (like Ozempic and Wegovy), its complex links to social acceptance versus stigma, and how this is redefining which bodies are defined as "normal" and "healthy" or not.
- Using the case of human-"weed" interactions to understand how the cultural classfication of plants shapes both biologies.
My current curriculum vitae is available here.
By the way, I write as and prefer to go professionally by Alexandra Brewis, but my legal name is Alexandra Slade. Techno-bureaucracy means my last name turns up variously in different systems as Brewis, Brewis Slade (no hyphen), Brewis-Slade (hyphen), and Slade. I answer to them all.
Here are recent headshots if you are looking for one:
The header is a painting by Odra Noel, courtesy of Wellcome Collections.