Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute, Vinh-Kim Nguyen is also an HIV specialist, emergency physician and medical anthropologist, which accounts for his interest in the relationship between science, politics and practice in global health. Interview.

Can you tell us about your current publications?

Seven years ago I wrote a book with Margaret Lock called An Anthropology of Biomedicine (Wiley, 2010) and a new edition is coming out – hopefully in about two weeks. The book sets up a theoretical framework for medical anthropology and anthropology of biomedicine that takes seriously the idea that there are human biological variations and that biomedicine is able to operate globally health because biology furnishes a universal standard, somewhat in the way that standard protocols enable computers to talk to each other and thereby constitute the internet. Biomedicine enables a powerful form of knowledge and intervention into human health, but standardisation has blinded us to significant local biological differences that emanate from socio-political historical forces. Today, developments in molecular biology and epigenomics point to a growing understanding of how social, political and material environments produce significant local biological differences over time.

The number of your professional activities is impressive. Do you still have time for academic research?

I do indeed as I am involved in three projects. With ERC funding, I have been able to assemble a small group of researchers to explore what we are tentatively calling a history of the end of AIDS. We are especially interested in examining how a particularly powerful intervention, called “PrEP” for “pre-exposure prophylaxis”, was developed and is now being implemented. PrEP involves taking antiretroviral drugs to protect against HIV, and is remarkably effective – bordering on 100%. Enthusiasm over this promising intervention has led to a rush to roll it out in Africa, which is not without potential pitfalls. Our project seeks to illuminate how PrEP plays out and examine whether it will fulfil the desired outcome of ending AIDS and if not, why not.

Another related project has grown out of the work I did with colleagues during the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, when I was asked to work with a team of clinical researchers seeking to identify treatments and vaccines for this deadly virus. In this context, it was important to understand the reaction to the epidemic and the international response, which we showed was characterised by miscommunication and misrecognition of just how powerfully these were interpreted through the lens of historical experiences.

A third and the newest project investigates the link between war, wounding and antimicrobial resistance, and developed out of an initial concern with understanding the causes of high rates of antibiotic resistance among the war-wounded in the Middle East.

I am teaching three courses this term on subject matter I am particularly passionate about, so it has been a challenge juggling teaching and research!

What have you read lately that has marked your research field or academic discipline?

Give a Man a Fish by James Ferguson.

Is there a “classic” academic article or book that you would like everybody to read – and why?

Marx’s Capital, volume 1, for several reasons! First, it is a hugely influential book that despite its notoriety is not read by many. Second, on a theoretical level this book is a foundational text for social science in general. It has a method that enables you to see the world differently. Third, it is also empirically very powerful, able to give remarkable insight into contemporary developments, particularly since the 2008 financial crisis. It has a kind of predictive power which makes it still useful and relevant today. Fourth, it provides the conceptual tools that open up many subsequent works and schools in social science. Fifth, this year marks the 150th year of the book, which is a good opportunity to revisit it. 

What books (academic or non academic) are currently on your nightstand?

I read a book long time ago that I am rereading, which is Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. As for fiction, I am reading an historical novel, Soie et fer, by Fawwaz Traboulsi. 

Do you have any special memory related to your thesis supervisor that you could share?

I met Professor Margaret Lock as an undergraduate student, and ended up doing my undergraduate thesis with her and subsequently a PhD; for over ten years we even lived within a few streets of each other! I remember how, early on in my PhD, we ended up stuck in traffic in a Montréal snowstorm. I asked her how she got interested in medical anthropology, and she talked about how she had always been fascinated by the relationship between biology and culture. When I asked her why she had done her doctoral research in Japan, thinking there must be some profound scientific reason I was missing, she laughed and said that Richard (her husband) and she had fallen in love with the country when they had travelled there together. 

By Sucharita Sengupta, PhD student in Anthropology and Sociology