Thurka Sangaramoorthy is a cultural and medical anthropologist and global health researcher with 25 years of experience conducting community-engaged ethnographic research, including rapid assessments, among vulnerable populations in the United States, Africa, and Latin America/Caribbean.  

Her work is broadly concerned with power and subjectivity in global economies of care. She has worked at this intersection on diverse topics, including global health and migration, HIV/STD, and environmental health disparities. She is the author of four books including: Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural AmericaLinks to an external site. (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), Rapid Ethnographic Assessments: A Practical Approach and Toolkit for Collaborative Community ResearchLinks to an external site. (Routledge, 2020) and Treating AIDS: Politics of Difference, Paradox of PreventionLinks to an external site. (Rutgers, 2014), and one in press: She’s Positive: The Extraordinary Lives of Black Women Living with HIV.  

She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and San Francisco, her M.P.H. from Columbia University, and is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at American University and Affiliate Professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. At American University, she is the Founding Director of the Public Ethnography Lab and serves as the Faculty Advisor for the Global Health and Culture certificate program. 

Dr. Sangaramoorthy serves on the Editorial Board of American Anthropologist, Social Science and Medicine, and Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology. In the past, she served as Co-Chair of the Members Programmatic Advisory and Advocacy Committee of the American Anthropological Association, on the Executive Board of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and as Associate Editor at Public Health Reports and PLOS Global Public Health.  

From 2022-2024, she served as a Refugee Coordinator for the Department of State's Bureau of Populations, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) at the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in addition to her faculty role at AU. 

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