Academic Degrees:

• Ph.D.,University of Michigan, 2012
• Postdoctoral Research, Brown University in Providence, RI

Teaching and Research Areas of Interest:

Her work centers on the intersections of health, kinship and care in sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. She is currently working on two projects.

The first project explores doula caregiving practices, doula communities, and doula perspectives on advocacy and reproductive justice. She is part of a research team, the Midwest Doula Research Collective, along with Dr. Angela Castañeda (DePauw University) and Dr. Julie Searcy (Butler University).

Links to their work:

• Infographic
• Preliminary Report

The second project examines the experiences of healthcare providers working with COVID-19 patients in the United States. This project seeks to understand how COVID-19 is impacting the professional experiences and personal lives of healthcare providers, and the experiences of patients resulting from the uncertainty, risk and rapid changes brought by the pandemic.

COVID-19 and Healthcare Providers Preliminary Findings

COVID-19 Infographic

Block, Ellen. "Exposed Intimacies: Clinicians on the Frontlines of the COVID-19 Pandemic." Anthropology in Action 27, no. 2 (2020): 63-67.

Block, E. and C. Vindrola-Padros (2021) “Making Do: COVID-19 and the improvisation of care in the UK and the US. In Manderson, Lenore, Nancy J. Burke, and Ayo Wahlberg, eds. Viral Loads: Anthropologies of urgency in the time of COVID-19. London: UCL Press: 303-323.

Selected chapters from Caring on the frontline during COVID-19: Contributions from Rapid Qualitative Research. Cecilia Vindrola-Padros and Ginger Johnson, eds.  London: Palgrave Macmillan

In her first book, "Infected Kin: Orphan Care and AIDS in Lesotho." (2019, Rutgers University Press), Block argues that AIDS is fundamentally a kinship disease, examining the ways it transcends infected individuals and seeps into kin relations and networks of care. The creative collaboration between Block and her writer/husband Will McGrath (author of Everything Lost is Found Again) blends ethnographic scholarship and creative nonfiction to bring to life the joys and struggles of the Basotho people at the heart of the AIDS pandemic.

Ellen’s research has been funded most recently by a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant. Her work appeared in a number of books and journals including JRAI, Anthropological Quarterly, AIDS Care, Death Studies, and Social Dynamics.

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/infected-kin/9781978804746

Infected Kin Teaching Resources: A variety of teaching materials and supplemental resources.

Spring 2023 Courses:

• SOCI 323 – Medical Anthropology
• SOCI 337U – Zambia EMB Study Abroad

Fall 2022 Courses:

• SOCI 121 – Intro to Anthropology
• SOCI 337P – Love, Sex and Marriage

Spring 2022 Courses:

• SOCI 277 – Global Health
• SOCI 323 – Medical Anthropology

More information about Prof. Ellen Block, including her publications, can be found on her CV or her academia.edu page.