An anthropologist by background, Anna Lavis is a Lecturer in Medical Sociology and Qualitative Methods in the Social Studies in Medicine (SSiM) Team in the Institute of Applied Health Research.
Her work explores individuals’ and informal caregivers’ experiences and subjectivities of mental illness and distress across a range of social and cultural contexts, both offline and on social media.
Her research to date has particularly focused on eating disorders, psychosis and self-harm, with theoretical emphases on gender, bodies and embodiment, concepts and ethics of care, and the intersections of mental health and material culture.
She has presented and published across the social and medical sciences and is involved in a number of interdisciplinary research collaborations both at Birmingham and externally.
Anna teaches on various programmes, covering topics in qualitative methods and medical sociology, as well as undertaking doctoral supervision both at Birmingham and externally. She is also the SSiM postgraduate lead. Anna accepts invitations for teaching and examining in the UK and abroad.
She is a core member of the newly-founded Birmingham Institute for Mental Health and holds an honorary research position in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.