Sjaak van der Geest

Sjaak van der Geest is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the Sociology and Anthropology Departmentof the University of Amsterdam.

He conducted fieldwork in Ghana and Cameroon and published books and articles on the following subjects: marriage and kinship, perceptions and practices concerning birth control, witchcraft beliefs, anthropological field research, Ghanaian Highlife songs, missionaries and anthropologists, anthropology of the night, and various topics in medical anthropology, in particular the cultural context of Western pharmaceuticals in non-Western communities, hospital ethnography, perceptions of sanitation and waste management, and social and cultural meanings of old age in Ghana.

Recently published books from his hand are Social lives of medicines (Cambridge University Press, 2002; co-authored with S.R. Whyte and A. Hardon), Ethnocentrism: Reflections on medical anthropology (Aksant, 2002, coedited with R. Reis), and Generations in Africa: Connections and conflicts. (2008, Münster: Lit-Verlag, co-edited with Ermute Alber & Susan R. Whyte).

He is founder and editor-in-chief of the Dutch / English journal Medische Antropologie (www.medische-antropologie.nl)

His personal website: http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/s.vandergeest/