The Friday Morning Seminar, as it is widely known, has been meeting every year since 1984, when it was launched as the foundational seminar for both a postdoctoral fellowship program in culture, psychiatry, and mental health as well as the predoctoral program in medical anthropology. Since that time, the seminar has brought together an interdisciplinary group of social scientists and clinicians, including faculty, fellows, students, and visiting scholars from across the University and the teaching hospitals, and universities across greater Boston.

The seminar is currently co-sponsored by the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, as well as private donations.

The seminar features presentations of new research and writing by faculty, fellows, and students, and by invited guests. Its perspective is global and international, with a focus on comparative and cross-cultural studies. Some seminars have led to edited books (recently: Postcolonial Disorders; Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations; and Shattering Culture), and special issues for journals such as Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry: An International Journal of Cross-Cultural Research. Every year, we bring to Harvard the most influential and innovative scholars and practitioners, from the US and elsewhere in the world, in an effort to foster a fruitful intellectual exchange as well as stimulate new paths for research.

During the 2020-2021 academic year, much of the seminar's focus has been dedicated to the various cultural, political and psychological aspects of COVID-19 and the pandemic in the United States and around the world. In addition, the seminar focuses on the politics of global psychiatry and mental health care, with special attention to comparative studies of social inequalities and hierarchies; identity, migration, and diversity; political violence and humanitarian interventions; and current debates concerning the relevance of psychiatric and biomedical knowledge, practice, diagnostic categories, treatment, and health care models, for low resource settings.

The seminar is chaired by Professors Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Byron J. Good, and Michael M.J. Fischer, and the organizing committee consists of Drs. Amy Moran-Thomas, Sadeq Rahimi, Michael Nathan, and Eric Jacobson.

The seminar meets 8–10 times or more per semester from 10:00 to 11:50 a.m. ET.  The meetings, which were previously held in 1550 William James Hall, are now held via Zoom.

Partial List of Past Seminars:

  • Friday February 17, 2023: Eugene Richardson on Coloniality, Global Health, and Reparations
  • Friday February 10, 2023: Rachel E. Wilbur: from Historical Trauma to Survivance 
  • Friday December 2, 2022:  Stephanie Smith, Beatha Nyirandagijimana and Hildegarde Mukasakindi and Bepi Raviola on Community-based health Care Delivery in Rwanda
  • Friday November 18, 2022: Kate Mason, Sarah Willen, and Heather Wurtz on COVID-19, Mental Health, and the Promise of Online Journaling
  • Friday November 4, 2022: Shai Satran on Empathy and Computerized Psychotherapy
  • Friday October 21, 2022: Alan Klima on Ethnography #9: How to Write Collaboratively (with a Ghost)
  • Friday October 14, 2022: Bethany Hedt-Gauthier, Temidayo Fadelu, and Anne Niyigena on Building Health Research and Research Capacity in Rwanda
  • Friday October 7, 2022: Can Aciksoz on Sacrificial Limbs: Disability, Masculinity, and Political Violence in Turkey. Discussants Christopher Dole and Akile Gursoy
  • Friday September 30, 2022: Sadeq Rahimi on The Hauntology of Everyday Life and current Iranian politics. Discussants Orkideh Behrouzan, Mike Fischer, and Mazyar Lotfalian
  • Friday May 6, 2022: Arthur Kleinman and Colleagues on Social Technology for Global Aging and Eldercare in China.
  • Friday April 8, 2022: Christophe Millien and Colleagues on the Impact of Natural Catastrophes and Gang Violence on Mental and Physical Health of Haitians
  • Friday April 1, 2022: Lesley Sharp on Punitive Care in Carceral America and The Prison-Based Hospice as a Site of Exception
  • Friday March 25, 2022: Edward Rohn and Jasmine Hearn on Assumptions and Narratives of Disability, Pain and COVID-19 for Persons with Spinal Cord Injury.
  • Friday March 11, 2022: Special session of Friday Morning Seminar remembering Paul Farmer
  • Friday March 4, 2022: Rebecca Lester on Complicated Empathy in Clinical Ethnography
  • Friday February 25, 2022: Chidi Ugwu on Personality Cults and Sacred Enchantments in Nigeria (and a moment to remember the late Dr. Paul Farmer)
  • Friday February 18, 2022: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva on The Anatomy of Loneliness in Contemporary Japan
  • Friday February 11, 2022: Darja Djordjevic on Oncology, Technology and Postcolonial Leadership in Rwanda
  • Friday December 3, 2021: Sarah Pinto and Andy McDowell on Psychiatric Diagnostics in Late Colonial India.
  • Friday November 5, 2021: Geoffrey Walcott and Jaswant Guzder on Fred Hickling’s legacy of Psycho-Historiographic Cultural Therapy in Jamaica
  • Friday October 22, 2021: Christopher Dole, Fatih Artvinli, and Turkish Colleagues on the interface of Psychiatry, Disaster, and Security in Turkey
  • Friday October 15, 2021: Seinenu Thein-Lemelson and Burmese Colleagues on Tracing Silences in the Burmese Democracy Movement
  • Friday October 8, 2021: Hans Pols, Mark Micale, Caroline Bennett and Narquis Barak on History, Psychiatry and Trauma in South East Asia
  • Friday October 1, 2021: Cheryl Mattingly and Stephanie Keeney Parks on Autism, Race, and Incarceration in the United States
  • Friday September 24, 2021: Sandeep Nanwani, Santi Kusumaningrum, Veronika Kusumaryati, and colleagues on on COVID and Global Response in Indonesia
  • Friday May 7, 2021: Ethan Manelin and Charlotte Neary-Bremer on Los Angeles County's Responses to Poverty, Mental Illness, and Addiction
  • Friday April 30, 2021: Dan Dohan and Iman Roushdy on the Social and Cultural Aspects of Cancer Care in the US
  • Friday April 23, 2021: Seth Hannah on Deconstructing Disparities Discourse During the Covid-19 Pandemic
  • Friday April 16, 2021: César Abadia Barrero on Latin American Social Medicine in Colombia
  • Friday April 2, 2021: Christina Warinner on The Archaeology of Microbes
  • Friday March 26, 2021: Aneel Brar on the Hidden Lives of Rajasthani Women
  • Friday March 5, 2021: Adia Benton on Black Lives and the Production of Epidemiological Knowledge from Georgia to Sierra Leone
  • Friday February 26, 2021: Felicity Aulino on Subjectivity, Belief and Knowledge in Thailand
  • Friday February 12, 2021: Scott Stonington on Ethical Theory and Complex Personhood in Thailand
  • Friday February 5, 2021: Sandra Hyde, Iman Roushdy, Sarah Willen, and Kate Mason panel on COVID-19 experiences in the US and Quebec
  • Friday December 11, 2020: Amy Moran-Thomas presents Anthropology of a Fever Dream, her personal account of the lived experience of COVID-19
  • Friday December 4, 2020: Orkideh Behrouzan presents COVID in Iran: Biological and Moral Immunity
  • Friday November 13, 2020: Kimberley Sue speaks on Practicing Pandemic Medicine: Structural Vulnerability, Addiction and COVID19
  • Friday November 6, 2020: Tony Pham speaks on Traditional Healers and Mental Health in Rural Nepal
  • Friday October 30, 2020: Panel on Haunting and Hauntology in Psychological Anthropology
  • Friday October 23, 2020: Joseph Calabrese: Mental Illness and Interventions in Bhutan: Findings from Embedded Clinical Ethnography
  • Friday October 9, 2020: Janis Jenkins and Tom Csordas examine impact and aspects of COVID-19 in the Mexico-US Border Zone
  • Friday October 2, 2020: Joseph P. Gone: Challenges to Evidence-Based Practice in Indigenous Community Mental Health
  • Friday September 25, 2020: Michael M.J. Fischer: Nighthawks (Bacurau), Viral Cultural Politics and COVID-19 (and the need for informed cultural-political reviewers)  
  • Friday September 18, 2020: Panel discussion: From Malawi to Massachusetts: Mental Health and Psychosocial Response in the Time of COVID-19
  • Friday May 22, 2020: Panel discussion on impact and experience of COVID-19 in Italy, Brazil, and Native populations in North and South America
  • Friday May 1, 2020: Panel discussion on clinical and cultural features of the COVID-19 experience in Hong Kong, Indonesia, United States and the United Arab Emirates
  • Friday April 24, 2020: Panel discussion on clinical and cultural features of COVID-19 experience in Boston area and across the United States