Bianca Dahl
Assistant Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Toronto
Canada
Biography
My book manuscript explores the unexpected effects of foreign-funded aid institutions attempting to provide culturally sensitive supplemental care for Tswana children who have been orphaned during the HIV epidemic. Moving outside the confines of these aid organizations by following children into everyday spaces of village life, the research reveals how and why donations of material goods – and the emotional economies that accompany them – are forging newly problematic patterns of social relations in rural Botswana. My newer research tackles a public health puzzle surrounding an unexpected upsurge of social stigma against HIV-positive children in Botswana, even as the rates of mother-to-child transmission drop and infected children’s chances of survival dramatically rise (epidemiological factors that are normally associated with decreased stigma).
Research Interest
Medical and sociocultural anthropology, anthropological demography, HIV & AIDS, children, humanitarianism, human rights, kinship, social stigma, affect/emotion
