Paper short abstract:

This paper reflects on the experience of integrating anthropological perspectives in training for public health students and practitioners. It explores the opportunities for encouraging critical engagement with public health practice and the limitations of packaging anthropology as a 'toolkit'.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reflects on the experience of integrating anthropological perspectives in interdisciplinary training for public health students and practitioners. It focuses specifically on the growing demand for ‘qualitative research’ in public health emergencies, and how this has generated new interest in ‘integrated’, interdisciplinary approaches. This has offered important opportunities to introduce anthropological questions in public health curricula and to encourage critical engagement with the politics of public health. Creating spaces for students and practitioners to challenge their assumptions and to reflect on their position in the field can make a tangible difference in the everyday work of public health practice. At the same time, teaching anthropology as an ‘add-on’ to public health training also has important limitations. This paper explores these by considering the consequences of packaging anthropology as a ‘toolkit’ to be deployed by practitioners, and in particular its potentially depoliticising effects. The discussion draws on experiences in teaching medical anthropology to public health students at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, as well as delivering qualitative research training to international humanitarian practitioners and field epidemiologists at the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone.