
Dr Shagufta Bhangu
Lecturer in Global Health & Social Medicine (Bioethics & Society)
Research interests
- Cancer
- Culture
- Medicine
Contact details
Biography
Dr Shagufta K Bhangu is a Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. She joined King's in 2020 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Wellcome-funded project, 'Grid Oncology : Remaking Cancer Care in India'. She continues to be a member of this project team. She is also a part of the Culture, Medicine and Power (CMP) research group, the Anti-Racism and Decolonising Steering Committee and the Politics of Cancer Network.
Shagufta completed her doctoral research on the emergence of pain medicine in India from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi and was awarded her doctorate in 2021. A part of her doctoral programme was spent as a Fulbright scholar in the medical anthropology programme at University of California San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley.
Research
- Social & Medical Anthropology
- Psychological Anthropology
- South Asian Studies
- Cancer
- Pain, Death & Dying
- Bereavement & Grief Evidence
- Epistemics & Expertise
Shagufta's research explores the emergence of new medical fields and imaginaries in South Asia. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, her doctoral research explored the medicalisation of pain, medical epistemics and practices in a milieu of dwindling state-supported healthcare, industrial labour and chronic illness in Kolkata, India.
Her current project continues her ethnographic focus on medical care and patient worlds taking her to a cancer hospital in Assam. In this frontier space, she is studying imaginations and practices of care, community, blame and responsibility, and nationhood.
Teaching
Undergraduate
- 4SSHM004/01B Introduction to Social Medicine 2
Postgraduate
- 7SSHM606 Global Health Ethics
Shagufta is happy to co-supervise PhD projects in her geographical and conceptual areas of expertise.
Further details
Research

Culture, Medicine & Power research group
Delving into the interdisciplinary study of social, cultural, political and historical dimensions of health and illness.

Global Oncology Group
The Global Oncology Group brings together global cancer faculty across King’s College London and it’s NHS partner hospitals under Kings’ Health Partners.
Events

Hospitals in South Asia: Health Policies, Care Practices
Editors and contributors of 'Hospitals in South Asia: Health Policies, Care Practices' will discuss the book's central themes.
Please note: this event has passed.

The political stakes of cancer: New contexts, new subjectivities
This workshop will be the first step in building a global network of early career researchers working on cancer in new contexts and with new subjectivities.
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.

Global Oncology Group
The Global Oncology Group brings together global cancer faculty across King’s College London and it’s NHS partner hospitals under Kings’ Health Partners.
Events

Hospitals in South Asia: Health Policies, Care Practices
Editors and contributors of 'Hospitals in South Asia: Health Policies, Care Practices' will discuss the book's central themes.
Please note: this event has passed.

The political stakes of cancer: New contexts, new subjectivities
This workshop will be the first step in building a global network of early career researchers working on cancer in new contexts and with new subjectivities.
Please note: this event has passed.