Anthropology Senior Research Seminar entitled 'The anthropological perspective on HIV/AIDS, between embodiment and gender vulnerability: notes from fieldwork in Tigray (North of Ethiopia)' will be held on Tuesday 12 November at 17:30 at the Faculty of Arts Library, University of Malta Msida Campus.
The speaker is Prof. Eugenio Zito (Federico II, Napoli).
Convenor: Jean-Paul Baldacchino
Light Refreshments will be provided. Students and members of the public are welcome.
For catering purposes kindly RSVP on: david.brincat@um.edu.mt
Abstract
The lecture deals with, in the perspective of medical anthropology and with reference to the African continent, some relevant issues about HIV/AIDS infection, as a human experience of illness, understood in its broader social and cultural complexity and with regard to its care processes. A specific development model is then analysed on the ethnographic side, that of the Hansenians’ Ethiopian Welfare Organization (H.E.W.O.), an NGO active in Ethiopia since 1969, with particular reference to the maternity ward at its hospital in Qwiha-Mekelle (Tigray). Conceived in collaboration with the local community this service has the aim to prevent the mother-child vertical transmission of HIV/AIDS during pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, but more generally to protect the experience of motherhood in a population of women coming from a context with significant material and health deficiencies.
Speaker
Eugenio Zito – Cultural Anthropologist
Eugenio Zito – Cultural Anthropologist
Department of Social Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Eugenio Zito, Ph.D. in Gender Studies, obtained the National Scientific Qualification as Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology in 2018. He is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Social Sciences of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy where he teaches Ethnology and Anthropology of Communication in the degrees courses and Medical Anthropology in two socio-sanitary Masters (I and II level). He is also Adjunct Professor at the School of Medicine and Surgery of the University Federico II where he teaches Medical Anthropology and Past Visiting Professor at Escuela Nacional de Antropologia e Historia in Mexico City, at Centre Marocain des Sciences Sociales, Universitè Hassan II, Casablanca, Morocco, at Département de Sociologie, Université Cadi Ayyad, Marrakech, Morocco, at Department of Anthropology at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal and at Department of Sociology at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine.
He is full member of the “European Association of Social Anthropologists”, of the “Società Italiana di Antropologia Culturale”, and of the “Società Italiana di Antropologia Medica”.
He is interested in body, social vulnerability, gender identity and chronic/infectious diseases in clinical settings and gender issues in socio-cultural contexts in the perspective of cultural, social and medical anthropology.
On these subjects he has researched on the field in the South of Italy (Campania Region), in the North of Ethiopia (State of Tigray), in Marrakech-Safi area in Morocco and published essays and articles.
The list of publications are available on the University of Naples Federico II website and on Google Scholar.