Dr Michelle Pentecost
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Global Health
Research interests
- Biomedical and life sciences
- Nutrition
- Child & Family
- Policy
- Mental Health
Biography
Michelle Pentecost is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Global Health. She is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and leads on the Trajectories project in collaboration with the Healthy Early Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI). She is an Academic Editor for PLOS Global Public Health and holds honorary affiliations to the University of the Witwatersrand, the Geneva Graduate Institute and the University of Cape Town.
Michelle has a dual training in clinical medicine (University of Cape Town, 2008) and medical anthropology (University of Oxford, 2017). Her publication record reflects her work across disciplines including anthropology, clinical medicine, urban studies, and public health, with a particular focus on critical approaches to global health and social medicine in Africa. Her primary research is focused on the social science of early life interventions, specifically in South Africa, where she has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork on maternal and child health as sites of global health knowledge production and intervention.
Her recently published book The Politics of Potential: Global Health and Gendered Futures in South Africa (Rutgers University Press, 2024) ethnographically examines how new scientific understandings of the developmental origins of health and disease constitute new forms of intergenerational responsibility that are racialized and gendered, and how these overlook the everyday potentialities that shape perceptions of the future in South Africa.
Michelle is also the lead editor of the Cambridge Handbook of DOHaD and Society: Past, Present and Future Directions of Biosocial Collaboration (Cambridge University Press, 2024), the first reference text for interdisciplinary research in the field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Other recent publications appear in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Medical Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Ethnos, BMJ Global Health and The Lancet, in which she is the lead editor on a series on Revitalising Global Social Medicine.
In addition to the UKRI, Michelle’s work has received support from DFID, the Wellcome Trust and the British Academy.
Research
- Postgenomics in global health
- STS of Africa
- Global health anthropology
- Social science of early life intervention
- Maternal and child health
- Politics of medicine
- Medical humanities
Michelle has an established research profile in the areas of postgenomics in global health, the social science of early life interventions, and the politics of biomedicine.
Her current research in South Africa investigates the social and ethical implications of public health interventions in the early life period from preconception to early childhood and develops innovative qualitative methodologies for studying the social factors that shape life trajectories. Read more at www.trajectories.co.za.
For more information and recent publications visit michellepentecost.net or follow on X @medanthdoc.
Teaching
PhD Supervision
Michelle invites queries for PhD supervision in the following areas:
- Anthropology of global health
- Anthropology of science/medicine
- Science and technology studies
- History and philosophy of science.
Further details
Research
Culture, Medicine & Power research group
Delving into the interdisciplinary study of social, cultural, political and historical dimensions of health and illness.
Mental Health & Society research group
Seeking to better understand the socio-political dimensions of mental health and illness in the Global North and South.
Reproduction Research Group
Our interdisciplinary group examines the complex social, cultural, and political dimensions of reproduction.
News
Global Health & Social Medicine academics support burgeoning researchers in social medicine
The Global Social Medicine Network recently held an essay competition for postgraduate students to give them the opportunity to have their work published.
Dr Michelle Pentecost awarded prestigious UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship
Ground-breaking research into the social and ethical implications of preconception interventions to be conducted by Dr Pentecost in partnership with the...
Events
Challenging ‘progress’: from life-course research to the geopolitics of 'development'
A discussion among scholars researching human "development" and those examining social and political "development."
Please note: this event has passed.
Book launch: The Politics of Potential
The Politics of Potential examines how new scientific understandings of the developmental origins of health and disease constitute new forms of...
Please note: this event has passed.
Research
Culture, Medicine & Power research group
Delving into the interdisciplinary study of social, cultural, political and historical dimensions of health and illness.
Mental Health & Society research group
Seeking to better understand the socio-political dimensions of mental health and illness in the Global North and South.
Reproduction Research Group
Our interdisciplinary group examines the complex social, cultural, and political dimensions of reproduction.
News
Global Health & Social Medicine academics support burgeoning researchers in social medicine
The Global Social Medicine Network recently held an essay competition for postgraduate students to give them the opportunity to have their work published.
Dr Michelle Pentecost awarded prestigious UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship
Ground-breaking research into the social and ethical implications of preconception interventions to be conducted by Dr Pentecost in partnership with the...
Events
Challenging ‘progress’: from life-course research to the geopolitics of 'development'
A discussion among scholars researching human "development" and those examining social and political "development."
Please note: this event has passed.
Book launch: The Politics of Potential
The Politics of Potential examines how new scientific understandings of the developmental origins of health and disease constitute new forms of...
Please note: this event has passed.