Seth Holmes, MD-PhD

Seth M. Holmes is the Chancellor's Professor of Society and Environment (Department of Environmental Science, Policy, Management) and Medical Anthropology at UC Berkeley. He is Co-Director (with Ian Whitmarsh) of the MD/PhD Track in Medical Anthropology coordinated between UCSF and UC Berkeley and Co-Chair (with Charles Briggs) of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine. Holmes is currently investigating social hierarchies, health, health care and the naturalization and normalization of difference and inequality in the context of transnational US-Mexico im/migration. This project led to the publication of the book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United Status (California Series in Public Anthropology, University of California Press, 2013). An article from this work was awarded the Rudolf Virchow Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology and the book received the New Millennium Book Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology, the Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Award, the Association for Humanist Sociology Book Award, and the James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. In addition, Holmes received the 2014 Margaret Mead Award (the only award given jointly by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology) for "bringing anthropology to bear on wider social and cultural issues." In addition to academic articles and the book, Holmes has written about this research for Salon.com, Access Denied, and The Huffington Post and has been interviewed on multiple NPR, PRI, Pacifica Radio, and Radio Bilingue shows. Concurrently, Holmes is conducting research into the production of the clinical habitus, subjectivity, and gaze, in other words, the processes through which biomedical trainees learn to perceive and respond to social differences and inequalities. In addition, Holmes is engaging in new research into representations of and responses to refugees in Europe; the social, symbolic, and political processes through which Latin@ youth in California navigate ethnicity, multi-layered citizenship, indigeneity, borders, and violence. Along with other academics, clinicians, activists and artists in the Critical Social Medicine Working Group known as "Rad Med", Holmes is engaged in imagining and experimenting with alternatives to the current systems of health care and racialized policing in the U.S. Holmes is affiliated faculty in the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality and Minor in LGBT Studies (UCB), Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory (UCB), Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society (UCB), Center for Race and Gender (UCB), Health Disparities and Diversity Faculty Cluster (UCB), Joint Medical MD/MS Program (UCB/UCSF), Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine (UCSF), Department of Medicine, Highland Hospital, School of Medicine (UCSF), Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (UCSD), and Center of Expertise in Migration and Health (UC System Wide). Education and Training • Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, Columbia University •Fellow, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard University •Fellow, Department of Anthropology and Division of Medical Humanities, University of Rochester •Intern and Resident, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania •Ph.D., Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco •M.D., School of Medicine, UC San Francisco •B.S., Ecology and Spanish / Latin American Studies, University of Washington