Professor Lenore Manderson

Biography

Professor Lenore Manderson joined Monash University in January 2006. She is a medical anthropologist and social historian, who also publishes in sociology and public health. Her interests include the anthropology of chronic conditions and disability, infectious disease in resource- poor settings, gender and sexuality, and questions of embodiment and identity.

She was an inaugural ARC Federation Fellow at The University of Melbourne then Monash University, from May 2002-April 2007. Under this award, she conducted research on chronic illness, disability, social relationships and well-being, including an inter-disciplinary multi-country study on social and cultural impact of chronic illness and disability in Australia and Southeast Asia. Prior to this, she was Director of the Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society (1999-2002), and from 1988-1998, Professor of Tropical Health at The University of Queensland.

Her focus is on postgraduate training, and she has now supervised to graduation over 50 doctoral students and 40 honours and masters students working in the fields of public health and medical social sciences, in immigrant, Indigenous and majority communities in Australia, and in diverse settings in Asia and Africa. Half of her students are international.

For the past 20 years, she has worked extensively to strengthen institution capability and develop research capacity in the social sciences and health, particularly in resource-poor environments in association with the WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (WHO/TDR).

Email Professor Manderson

Professional Activities

Current Appointments

Hillel Friedland Fellow, School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand

Professor, School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University

School of Political and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Monash University

Honours and Awards

Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, 1995

ARC Federation Fellowship, 2002-2007 (inaugural awards, awarded 25 September 2001)

Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Research Residency, 2003

National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Research Resident, 2003

Fellow of the Society for Applied Anthropology (USA), 2002

Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, 2004

Hillel Friedland Award, University of the Witwatersrand, 2007

MASA Graduate Student Mentor Award, Society of Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, 2007

Current Board and Committee Membership

Member, Inaugural Public Health Research Expert Advisory Panel (Victorian Department of Human Services), 2007-2009

Executive Board, Society of Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, 2006-2009

Society of Medical Anthropology, Papers Award Committee, Chairperson 2008

Society of Medical Anthropology, Chairperson, Dissertation Award, 2007-2008

Scientific Advisory Committee, Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, 2001-

Research Interests

Professor Manderson’s research includes a series of related and complementary projects, which aim to contribute substantially to understanding how, in different cultural, social and economic settings and under different, more immediate circumstances, embodied experience, ideas of the self, and social relationships and their meanings, are revised and restructured as a result of corporeal change. The program is divided into a series of activities that capitalize, consolidate and expand on her earlier work. The major project is a study of cross-cultural contexts of disability and social exclusion. In collaboration with colleagues, comparative research is being undertaken in urban and rural settings in Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar and Lao People’s Democratic Republic on cultural models and community understandings of disability; patterns of care and social integration of people with disability.

In 2008, she commenced a new project, funded by ARC, with Professor Pranee Liamputtong (La Trobe University), Dr Elizabeth Hoban and Dr Katie Vasey, on Immigration and Parenting among Cambodian and Iraqi women in Australia. This study will explore the interrelationships between immigration, parenthood and personal and family identity in contemporary Australia. We will examine how experiences of resettlement and parenting interrelate, and analyze the tensions that emerge as women negotiate state institutions associated with resettlement and parenting. We will analyze how women use social networks in Australia and country of origin, through travel and transnational communication, for practical and emotional support, information and advice. By combining ethnographic and innovative survey methods, this study will generate new knowledge of the creative ways in which women negotiate social structures, extend networks and build up personal resources to ensure, in their own terms, that their children have a healthy start to life.

Postgraduate Research Projects

Ansariadi Social and geographical determinants of pregnancy outcomes in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. (Primary Supervisor: Lenore Manderson, Co-Supervisor: Milica Markovic)
Bianca Brijnath Age, Invisibility and Madness: Understanding Dementia Care in India. (Primary Supervisor: Lenore Manderson, Co-Supervisor: Nellie Georgiou-Karistianis )
Simonetta Cengarle Banking on the future: The decision to bank umbilical cord stem-cells, the case of Thailand (Primary Supervisor: Lenore Manderson; Co-supervisor: Narelle Warren, External Supervisor: Pimpawun Boonmongkon, Mahidol University)
Chhordaphea Chhea Coping with Tuberculosis: Understand Health Seeking Behaviour in Cambodia. (Primary Supervisor: Lenore Manderson; Co-supervisor: Dr. Narelle Warren)
Melina Czymoniewicz- Klippel. Understanding Children and Childhoods in Cambodia. Monash University. (Primary supervisor: Milica Markovic; Co-supervisor: Liz Hoban; External supervisor: Lorraine Dowler, Pennsylvania State University).
Riana Dewi Nugrahani. Work, gender and health in South Sulawesi. Monash University. (Primary supervisor: Lenore Manderson; Co-supervisor: RoseAnne Misajon).
Surekha Garimella. Agency and contingency: Working women in New Delhi, India. Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, University of Melbourne. (Primary Supervisor: Lenore Manderson; Co-supervisor: Mridula Bandyopadhyay).
Pauline Gwatirisa. Food aid targeting: Lived experiences of non-beneficiary low-middle income primary caregivers in an urban setting, Zimbabwe. Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, The University of Melbourne. (Primary Supervisor: Lenore Manderson).
Liz Manton The social construction of being 'at risk': understandings of risk and health risk of middle-aged overweight and moderately obese Australians. Monash University (Primary Supervisor: Milica Markovic; Co-supervisor: Lenore Manderson)
Tamasin Ramsay Spiritual response to disaster: an ethnography of the Brahma Kumaris. Endeavour Research Fellow. PhD Candidate, Social Sciences and Health Research Unit, Monash University (Supervisors: Professor Lenore Manderson, Dr Wendy Smith)
Ajay Ranjan Singh Social exclusion, disadvantage and wellbeing: A study of rickshaw pullers in Delhi, India. (Primary supervisor: Lenore Manderson; Co-supervisor: Marika Vicziany)
Marguerite Schneider Classifying disability and function: Case study from South Africa. PhD dissertation, School of Public Health, The University of the Witwatersrand (Primary supervisor: Jane Goudge; Co-supervisor: Lenore Manderson)
Elizabeth Short New reproductive technology and lesbian motherhood. PhD dissertation, Key Centre for Women's Health in Society, University of Melbourne. (Co-supervisor: Lenore Manderson)
Sappaporn Wirattanapokin. Thai adolescents and Type 2 Diabetes: Understanding the social context. Monash University. (Primary Supervisor: Milica Markovic; Co-supervisors: Lenore Manderson and Andrea Whittaker).

Collaborations

Honorary professorial appointments at the School of Public Health, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, The Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Malaysia and The Faculty of Nursing, Khon Kaen University, Thailand.

Grant Support

Immigration and parenting among Cambodian and Iraqi women in Australia. ARC DP 0878866 2009-2011 (with Liamputtong, P., La Trobe; Hoban, L., Deakin; Vasey, K., Monash)

Publications

Books

MANDERSON, L. 1980. Women, Politics, and Change. The Kaum Ibu UMNO Malaysia, 1945-1972. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Also as Wanita, Politik dan Perubahan. Pergerakan Kaum Ibu UMNO Malaysia, 1945-1972. Kuala Lumpur: Fajar Bakti Sdn Bhd (1981).

MANDERSON, L. (ed.) 1986. Shared Wealth and Symbol: Food, Culture and Society in Oceaniaand Southeast Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Crouch, M. and MANDERSON, L. 1993. New Motherhood: Cultural and Personal Transitions in the 1980s. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Press/Gordon and Breach.

MANDERSON, L. 1996. Sickness and the State. Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870-1940. Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press (reprinted cloth and paper 2002)

Rice, P.L. and MANDERSON, L. (eds.) 1996. Maternity and Reproductive Health in Asian Societies. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Press/Gordon and Breach.

MANDERSON, L. and Jolly, M. (eds.) 1997. Sites of Desire/Economies of Pleasure. Sexualities in Asiaand the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Whiteford, L.M. and MANDERSON, L. (eds.). 2000. Global Health Policy, Local Realities: The Fallacy of the Level Playing Field. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

MANDERSON, L. and Liamputtong, P. (eds.) 2002. Coming of Age in South and Southeast Asia: Youth, Courtship and Sexuality. London: NIAS/Curzon Press.

MANDERSON, L. and Bennett, L. R. (eds.) 2003. Violence against Women in Asian Societies. London: ASAA/Routledge.

MANDERSON, L. (ed.). 2005. Rethinking Wellbeing: Essays on health, disability and disadvantage. Perth Curtin University Press for API Network

MANDERSON, L. and SMITH-MORRIS, C. (eds). Under contract. Chronic Conditions, FluidStates: Globalization and the Anthropology of Illness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.