Mac Skelton is Director of the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS) at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS), and Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine at King’s College London.

Trained as an anthropologist of the Middle East, his research and fieldwork span Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria, with particular interests in conflict, mobility, and health. His research has examined the ‘therapeutic geographies’ of war-affected patients seeking cancer care, alongside newer work on the long-term experiences of patients with war-related injuries. He is a Commissioner for the Lancet Respiratory Medicine Commission on Palliative Care Integration in Serious Respiratory Illness and previously served as a Commissioner on the Lancet Oncology Commission on the Human Crisis of Cancer.

Skelton holds a PhD in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Anthropology from the American University of Beirut.