Anthropology

2/12/2018—4 pm—CSE E252—Kristen McLean
“Engendering Change: Fatherhood, Masculinity and Resilience in the Context of Ebola.”
In this talk I will be focusing on the concept of resilience and asking how people construct and sustain wellbeing despite exposure to significant adversity. I will discuss my work on fatherhood, masculinity and psychosocial wellbeing in Sierra Leone, examining how experiences of fatherhood, within a context of shifting gender norms, shape resilience among young men with implications for their mental health. I will also examine “social resilience” in the context of the West African Ebola epidemic in Liberia, specifically assessing how communities compensated for the collective failures of state and international institutions and demonstrated self-reliance and innovation in containing the epidemic at a micro-social level.
Kristen McLean is a PhD Candidate at Yale University in the Department of Anthropology. She works on issues related to gender, mental health, and resilience in cross-cultural contexts. Her current research focuses on masculinity, fatherhood, and men’s psychosocial health in post-conflict, Ebola-affected Sierra Leone. She also plays a leading role in the Ebola 100 Project, which examines humanitarian experiences of the West African Ebola response and has studied community-based responses to the epidemic as well. Kristen has also conducted research in both Haiti, looking at various strategies to implement mental health task-sharing interventions, and Liberia, on issues related to mental health stigma. She has received funding for her research from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and NSF, and has published extensively including in Social Science and Medicine, Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. She has a BA and Master of Public Health from Emory University and is originally from Atlanta, Georgia.