Research output per year
Research output per year
Øster Farimagsgade 5, Opgang E
1353 København V
Inspired by the philosophy of pragmatism and the methods of ethnography, I do research and research training on contemporary social issues. Overall, I am concerned with attempts by persons and societies to secure well-being, with all the contradictions and uncertainties that entails. My work involves various forms of collaboration with colleagues in Denmark and Africa. For three decades I have been involved in research capacity strengthening projects with universities in Uganda.
Regionally, I have done fieldwork in Tanzania, Kenya, and most extensively in Uganda.
Research areas:
Current research projects:
https://cas.au.dk/om-instituttet/afdelinger/antropologi/forskningsprogrammet-antropologi/forskningsprojekter/imagenu
BSU—Building Stronger Universities (Gulu, Aalborg, Roskilde Universities). This programme intends to strengthen research, teaching and community engagement at Gulu, a small government university in northern Uganda. Under the theme, ‘Rights, Resources and Gender’, I am working with the Adjumani Elders Forum to document relations between hosts and refugees.
https://cas.au.dk/om-instituttet/afdelinger/antropologi/forskningsprogrammet-antropologi/forskningsprojekter/imagenu
Selected recent publications:
Meinert, Lotte and SR Whyte (eds) 2023.This Land is not for Sale: Trust and Transition in Northern Uganda. New York: Berghahn. Open Access.
Whyte, SR. 2023. Whose aspirations? Intergenerational moves in eastern Uganda. In: M. Amrith, V. K. Sakti, and D.Sampaio (eds) Aspiring in Later Life: Movements Across Time, Space, and Generations. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Muyinda, Herbert and SR Whyte (eds) 2022. Disability and Technology in Africa. Special Issue. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 92 (4).
Whyte, SR. 2022. Virtues and vexations: intimate others caring for elders in eastern Uganda. In: Cheryl Mattingly and Lone Grøn (eds) Imagistic Care: Growing Old in a Precarious World. New York: Fordham University Press.
Oboke, Henry and SR. Whyte. 2020. Anger and bitter hearts: the spread of suicide in northern Ugandan families. Ethnos 85 (4): 612-628.
Whyte, SR. 2020. In the long run: Ugandans living with disability. Current Anthropology 61, Supplement 21: S132-S140
Meinert, Lotte and SR Whyte. 2020. Legacies of violence: the communicability of spirits and trauma in northern Uganda. In: Biosocial Worlds: Anthropology of Health Environments Beyond Determinism. J. Seeberg, A. Roepstorff and L. Meinert (eds.) London: UCL Press.
Whyte, SR., Michael Whyte, and David Kyaddondo. 2018. Technologies of inquiry: AIDS tests and divination in Uganda. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1-2): 97-108.
Whyte, SR. 2018. Health. In: Critical Terms for the Study of Africa. G. Desai and A. Masquelier (eds) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lotte Meinert and SR Whyte. 2017. “These things continue”: Violence as contamination in everyday life after war in Northern Uganda. Ethos 45(2): 271-286.
Whyte, SR. (ed) 2014. Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda. Durham: Duke University Press.
Personal
Born in New York, 4 August 1943
Permanent resident of Denmark since January 1972
Education
B.A. magna cum laude in Sociology and Anthropology, Smith College, 1965
PhD in Anthropology, University of Washington, 1973
Academic Appointments
Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, 1998-present.
Lektor (Associate Professor), Dept of Anthropology, Univ. of Copenhagen, 1977-1997.
Adjunkt (Assistant Professor), Dept of Anthropology, Univ. of Copenhagen, 1974-1977.
Instructor, Dept of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, 1972-1974.
Gulu University, Uganda, Research and teaching collaborator, 2008-present.
Child Health and Development Centre, Makerere University, Uganda, Research Associate, 1994-present
Makerere Institute of Social Research, Uganda, Research Associate, 1968-1971, 1989-90.
Department of Social Medicine, Harvard University, Visiting Associate Professor, 1993
Centre for the Cross-Cultural Study of Women, Oxford University, Visiting Fellow, 1986.
Department of History, University of Nairobi, Research Associate, 1978-1979.
Research areas
Research supervision and leadership
Primary supervision of 34 Ph.D. projects and co-supervision of 27
PhD assessment committees: Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Keele, East Anglia, Amsterdam, Leipzig, Zurich, Bayreuth, Ghent, Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø, Uppsala, Stockholm, Karolinska, Danish Educational University, Aarhus, Copenhagen
Planning and supervision of a two year national study of community drug use in Uganda, 1992-1994 and a three year intervention research phase 1996-1999 (EU and Danida).
Leader of Enhancement of Research Capacity Programme (Danida) on interactions between communities and health systems in Uganda, with Makerere University, 1994-2006
Leader, Danish National Research School of Anthropology and Ethnography, 2001-4
Leader, Research Centre on Social Difference and Health Promotion, 2005-8
Steering group. Type 2 diabetes among ethnic minority groups in Denmark. Danish Diabetes Association. 2005-2007.
Senior Researcher/ Steering Committee: Changing human security: recovering from armed conflict in northern Uganda, with Gulu University, 2009-13
Senior Researcher/Steering Committee: Post-Conflict Mobility: Challenges and Potentials for Primary Health Care in Northern Uganda, with Gulu University, 2013-2018
Senior Researcher/ Steering Committee: Improving medicine use for children in Uganda, with Makerere University, 2011-2014
Senior Researcher/ Steering Committee: Transforming governance: land and trust in northern Uganda, with Gulu University 2013-2017
Senior Researcher/ Steering Committee: Imagining Gender Futures in Uganda, with Gulu University, 2019-2024
Steering committee/Coordinator: Building Stronger Universities I, II & III. 2011-2022 (Gulu University)
Advisory Board/Partner: ANTHUSIA, The Anthropology of Human Security in Africa, 2017-2021
Advisory Board: Medical and environmental anthropology for 21st century East Africa, with Oslo University and University of Dar es Salaam, 2022-2026.
Advisory Board: Reorienting integration: Family-to-family as a model in Congolese UN-quota refugees’ settlement and orientation towards a new life in Denmark, 2022- 2026.
Advisory Board: ALTER-US: Kinship, Cognitive Difference and Care in the 21st Century Danish Welfare State. 2021-2024
Senior Researcher: CONTINUITY: Understanding how mobility affects forcibly displaced persons’ continuity of chronic health care. 2022-2027
Co-PI: Consequences of Covid-19 for Youth Reproductive Health in Uganda, 2022-2024
Other Professional Positions
Member of the Council for Development Research, Danish Foreign Ministry, 1987-1992. (Vice-chairman from 1990).
Member of the Danish Research Council for the Humanities, 1987-1992.
Member of the Board, Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, 1989-92, 1999-2001.
Founding Board Member, Danish International Health Research Network, 1994-2009 (Centre for International Health and Development 2004-6).
Member of Copenhagen University's North/South Research Coordination Group, 1995-2002.
Board Member, Council on Health Research for Development (Geneva), 1996-2002.
Advisory Board, Max Planck Institute: Law, Organisation, Science and Technology: 2007-11
Scientific Committee, Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims, 2006-2012
Associated Senior Fellow, Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies, 2016-2021
Member of selection committee, Bethwell E. Ogot Prize for best book on East Africa, Africa Studies Association, 2015-2017
Council Member, International African Institute, 2014-present
Editorial
Co-editor of Folk, Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society, 1981-1993.
Corresponding editor, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1986-present.
Editorial Board, Health Transition Review, 1990-1997
Editorial Board, Anthropology & Medicine, 1996-present
International Advisory Editorial Board, Handbook of Disability Studies, Sage, 1999
Editorial Advisory Board, Africa. Journal of the International Africa Institute, 2012-present
Co-editor, Journal of Peace and Security Studies, 2015-present
Advisory Board, Medicine Anthropology Theory, 2014-present
Corresponding editor, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1986-present.
Review work
Referee for articles in Current Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Associations, Africa, African Affairs, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology and Medicine, Social Science & Medicine, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Social Studies of Science, Journal of Disability in Africa, International Journal of African Historical Studies, Critique of Anthropology, Global Public Health, Journal of Refugee Studies, and others.
Reviewer of book proposals and manuscripts for University of California Press, Cambridge University Press, James Currey, Wiley-Blackwell, Palgrave, Berghahn, Routledge, University of Chicago Press, Policy Press, Duke University Press, De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Reviewer of research and award proposals: MacArthur Foundation, Swiss National Research Council, Austrian Research Council, Wellcome Trust, and others
Professional Awards
Honorary Doctorate, 17, Instituto de Estudios Criticos, Mexico City, 2021
Ester Boserup Award, University of Copenhagen, 2015
New Millenium Book Award 2015, Honorable Mention for Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda
Honorary Doctorate, Faculty of Arts, University of Zürich, 2014
Einar Hansen Research Fund, Honorary Prize for Humanistic Research, 2013
Scholar for a day, University of Pennsylvania, African Studies Center, September 21, 2009
Amaury Talbot Prize awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain for the most valuable monograph in African anthropology published in 1997.
Major Research Grant Activities (last 12 years)
2009-2013 Preventive medication and healthy ageing (co-recipient), Copenhagen University Center for Healthy Aging, Nordea Foundation
2014-2018 Community Innovation for Healthy Aging (co-recipient), Copenhagen University Center for Healthy Aging, Nordea Foundation,
2009-2013 Changing human security: recovering from armed conflict in northern Uganda (co-recipient), Danish Consultative Committee for Development Research
2011-2014 Improving medicine use for children in Uganda (co-recipient), Danish Consultative Research Committee for Development Research
2011-2022 Building Stronger Universities I, II & III, Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
2013-2016 Governing transition in northern Uganda: trust and land (co-recipient), Danish Consultative Committee for Development Research
2013-2018 Post-conflict mobility: challenges and potentials for primary health care in northern Uganda (co-recipient), Consultative Committee for Development Research
2017-2021 Aging as a human condition (co-recipient), Velux Foundations
2019-2023 Imagining gender futures in Uganda (co-recipient), Consultative Committee for Development Research
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Communication
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Book chapter › Research › peer-review