The Medical Anthropology and Global Health Unit at the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Centre for Public Health, has a long history at the Medical University of Vienna. Founded under Armin Prinz as the “Department of Ethnomedicine”, the unit is now much more comprehensive and covers research areas such as the socio-cultural impacts and perceptions of infectious diseases (Ebola virus disease, Lassa fever, mpox, measles, yellow fever), reproductive health (FGM/C), access problems in healthcare for marginalised and vulnerable groups, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), human-animal-environment interactions (One Health), as well as social science approaches and perspectives on health emergencies and humanitarian missions.
In all its activities and projects, the unit combines basic research, the development of applied tools, participatory approaches to citizen science, and active engagement with vulnerable groups. In recent years, we have established ourselves as a platform for expertise in the fields of medical anthropology and global health, crisis and disaster research, and policy engagement.
The unit is actively involved in teaching in the compulsory curriculum of the Medical University of Vienna, including in blocks 1, 6, 15 and 22/23, in various PhD courses, and we supervise numerous doctoral, diploma and master's students.