Claudia Merli

Senior Global Horizons Fellow, SCAS.
Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Uppsala University.

Claudia Merli’s research developed on parallel paths in both medical anthropology and the anthro-
pology of disasters. Working primarily on Thailand, her fields of investigation include health and
the body (Bodily Practices and Medical Identities in Southern Thailand, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis,
2008), female and male genital cutting (in Culture, Health & Sexuality), the theodicies of the 2004
Indian Ocean tsunami (in Religion), and politics of forensic identification (in Human Remains and
Violence). Recently she expanded her research regionally (Italy, Japan) and thematically to explore
technogenic disasters, volcanic hazard in a comparative perspective (in History and Anthropology),
and COVID-19 (in Anthropology Today). She has held academic positions at Durham University (2009–
2017), and joined Uppsala University in 2018. In 2019 she was awarded Uppsala University’s Lutteman
Scholarship, given to a Reader of high distinction.

A Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, she also served as a
member on its medical anthropology committee. At Uppsala she is a Fellow of the Centre of Natural
Hazards and Disaster Science. She is one of the coordinators for the Disaster and Crisis Anthropology
Network (EASA). Merli was invited as contributing author for the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Society’s World Disaster Report 2014, and collaborates with the Transkulturellt
Centrum in Stockholm in training medical professionals in ethnographic methods (2022).

As a Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study she will be working on the production of
political space via national and individual bodies, and processes of state making in Thailand.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2022-23.