Sandra Widmer
Associate Professor
Graduate Program Director
Phone: (416)736-2100 Ext: 33716
Email: swidmer@yorku.ca
Primary website: Personal Website
Accepting New Graduate Students
I conduct research at the intersections of reproductive, disability and environmental politics in relation to the ongoing structures of colonialism and racial capitalism that impact health, kinship and care. I work with decolonial, anti-colonial and feminist methodologies, including archival, digital and ethnographic methods in the southwestern Pacific Islands (especially Vanuatu), Canada and online spaces.
My research is organized in the following projects:
Disability Matters
What are the impacts of the medical model of disability in Vanuatu? What are the care networks around local categories and experiences of disability? This questions have increasing relevance due to extremely high rates of untreated chronic illnesses, climate disasters, the reduction of subsistence food production and expansion of overseas labour migration. I collaborate with Further Arts, a Ni-Vanuatu organization. This is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant.
Eating for Trillions
In this project, funded by a SSHRC Insight development Grant, I look at how the human microbiome, as a material semiotic actor, is taken up in digital health technologies (like the DTC microbiome test), complementary medicine and food cultures.
Metabolic Exposures
What have human metabolisms been exposed to in the post-war era in addition to dietary changes? How are the biopolitics of colonialisms connected to land and environmental politics? I look at the 1960s research of Australian colonial scientists responsible for nutrition standards of plantation labourers in their Pacific colonies that compared the metabolisms of people living what they called a "subsistence lifestyle” with people working for wages. As well, I examine the social and historical circumstances that meant increasing exposures to plastics and other toxins.
Moral Figures
This culminated in my monograph, Moral Figures.
Key themes include: critical studies of demography and population sciences; colonial intervention on Indigenous kinship; Indigenous forms of prenatal and birth care; Indigenous women training as nurses; alternative indicators of well-being; young mothers and social stigma; reproductive justice and land politics.
Degrees
PhD, York UniversityMA, Dalhousie University
BA, Dalhousie University
Professional Leadership
I am the co-chair of the Medical Anthropology Network of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).
Research Interests
“Census; New Hebrides/Vanuatu” In The Planning Moment: Colonial and Post Colonial Histories, edited by Sarah Blacker, Emily Brownell, Anindita Nag, Martina Schluender, Sarah van Beurden and Helen Verran. New York: Fordham Press.
"Reproductive labour and Indigenous hospitalities in post/colonial fieldwork" In Invisible Labour in Modern Science, edited by Jenny Bangham, Judy Kaplan and Xan Chacko. Bloomsbury Press.
“Making People Countable: Analyzing Paper Trails and the Imperial Census” in Approaching the Imperial Archive: Sources and Methods in Histories of Colonialism, Kirsty Reid and Fiona Paisley, eds. Oxford: Routledge Press.
“Colonial Demography: Rationalities, Practices, Discourses” (with Samuël Coghe) in Twentieth Century Population Thinking: A Critical Reader of Primary and Secondary Sources, Population Knowledge Network, ed. London: Routledge. pp. 37-64.
“Filtering Demography and Biomedical Technologies: Melanesian Nurses and Global Population Concerns (1920-1970)” in A World of Populations: Transnational Perspectives on Demography in the Twentieth Century, Corinna R. Unger and Heinrich Hartmann, eds. Oxford: Berghahn Press. pp. 222-242.
“Seeing Health Like a Colonial State: Assistant Medical Practitioners and Nascent Biomedical Citizenship in the New Hebrides” in Senses and Citizenships: Embodying Political Life, S. Trnka, J. Park and C. Dureau, eds. New York: Routledge. pp. 200-220.
“Making Mothers: The Changing Relationships of Birth and Raising Children in Pango Village, Vanuatu” in An Anthropology of Mothering, Michelle Walks and Naomi MacPherson, eds. Bradford: Demeter Press. pp. 102-114.
“Reproducing Life in Conditions of Abandonment in Oceania” Introduction to Special Issue on Reproductive Abandonment. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 23:4-5, 301-310, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2022.2115543 (With Jenny Munro, first Author).
“Health and Medicine during and after the Pacific War: Pacific Islanders, Institutions, Infrastructure, Ingenuities.” Introduction to Special Issue. Health and History 23(2): 1-13. (with Christine Winter).
Widmer, Alexandra. 2021. "Locating Low-Protein Life: Post-War Colonial Nutrition Science, Subsistence Metabolisms and Food Cultures in the South-Western Pacific Islands," Food, Culture and Society, 24(4), 525–542.
Widmer, A. (2021). Positioning Human Microbiome DTC Tests: On the Search for Health, Data and Alternatives Amid the Financialisation of Life. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 8(2), 1-12.
“The Imbalanced Sex-Ratio and the High Bride Price: Watermarks of Race in Demography and the Colonial Regulation of Reproduction” Special Issue, “Technologies of Belonging: Biology, Race and Ethnicity in Europe”, Amade M'charek, Katharina Schramm and David Skinner, eds. Science, Technology and Human Values 39(4): 538-560.
“Making Blood ‘Melanesian’: Fieldwork and Isolating Techniques in Genetic Epidemiology (1963–1976)” Special Issue, “Making Human Heredity: Populations, Life Sciences and Public Health in the Post-War Era”, Jenny Bangham and Soraya de Chadarevian, eds. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47(Part A): 118-129.
“Of Temporal Politics and Demographic Anxieties: ‘Young Mothers’ in Demographic Predictions and Social Life in Vanuatu” Anthropologica 55(2): 317-328.
“Diversity as Valued and Troubled: Social Identities and Demographic Categories in understandings of Rapid Urban Growth in Vanuatu” Special Issue “Medical Crises, Diversification and Mainstreaming”, David Parkin, Kristine Krause and Gabriele Alex, eds. Anthropology and Medicine 20(2): 142-159.
“From Research Encounters to Metropolitan Debates: The Making and Meaning of the Melanesian ‘Race’ during Demographic Decline”. Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 58: 69-93
“Native Medical Practitioners, Temporality and Nascent Biomedical Citizenship in the New Hebrides”. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 30(s1): 57-80.
“The Effects of Elusive Knowledge: Census, Health Laws and Inconsistently Modern Subjects in Early Colonial Vanuatu”. Journal of Legal Anthropology 1(1): 92-116.
Approach to Teaching
Past Courses Taught
Biomedicine in the 20th Century (STS)
Health and Illness in Cross-Cultural Context: Learning and Doing Medical Anthropology
Critical Issues in Medical Anthropology
Anthropology of Global Health
Anthropology of Science and Technology
Sex, Love and Marriage: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Kinship
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2025 | GS/ANTH5000 6.0 | A | Graduate Seminar in Ethnographic Researc | SEMR |
I conduct research at the intersections of reproductive, disability and environmental politics in relation to the ongoing structures of colonialism and racial capitalism that impact health, kinship and care. I work with decolonial, anti-colonial and feminist methodologies, including archival, digital and ethnographic methods in the southwestern Pacific Islands (especially Vanuatu), Canada and online spaces.
My research is organized in the following projects:
Disability Matters
What are the impacts of the medical model of disability in Vanuatu? What are the care networks around local categories and experiences of disability? This questions have increasing relevance due to extremely high rates of untreated chronic illnesses, climate disasters, the reduction of subsistence food production and expansion of overseas labour migration. I collaborate with Further Arts, a Ni-Vanuatu organization. This is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant.
Eating for Trillions
In this project, funded by a SSHRC Insight development Grant, I look at how the human microbiome, as a material semiotic actor, is taken up in digital health technologies (like the DTC microbiome test), complementary medicine and food cultures.
Metabolic Exposures
What have human metabolisms been exposed to in the post-war era in addition to dietary changes? How are the biopolitics of colonialisms connected to land and environmental politics? I look at the 1960s research of Australian colonial scientists responsible for nutrition standards of plantation labourers in their Pacific colonies that compared the metabolisms of people living what they called a "subsistence lifestyle” with people working for wages. As well, I examine the social and historical circumstances that meant increasing exposures to plastics and other toxins.
Moral Figures
This culminated in my monograph, Moral Figures.
Key themes include: critical studies of demography and population sciences; colonial intervention on Indigenous kinship; Indigenous forms of prenatal and birth care; Indigenous women training as nurses; alternative indicators of well-being; young mothers and social stigma; reproductive justice and land politics.
Degrees
PhD, York UniversityMA, Dalhousie University
BA, Dalhousie University
Professional Leadership
I am the co-chair of the Medical Anthropology Network of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).
Research Interests
All Publications
“Census; New Hebrides/Vanuatu” In The Planning Moment: Colonial and Post Colonial Histories, edited by Sarah Blacker, Emily Brownell, Anindita Nag, Martina Schluender, Sarah van Beurden and Helen Verran. New York: Fordham Press.
"Reproductive labour and Indigenous hospitalities in post/colonial fieldwork" In Invisible Labour in Modern Science, edited by Jenny Bangham, Judy Kaplan and Xan Chacko. Bloomsbury Press.
“Making People Countable: Analyzing Paper Trails and the Imperial Census” in Approaching the Imperial Archive: Sources and Methods in Histories of Colonialism, Kirsty Reid and Fiona Paisley, eds. Oxford: Routledge Press.
“Colonial Demography: Rationalities, Practices, Discourses” (with Samuël Coghe) in Twentieth Century Population Thinking: A Critical Reader of Primary and Secondary Sources, Population Knowledge Network, ed. London: Routledge. pp. 37-64.
“Filtering Demography and Biomedical Technologies: Melanesian Nurses and Global Population Concerns (1920-1970)” in A World of Populations: Transnational Perspectives on Demography in the Twentieth Century, Corinna R. Unger and Heinrich Hartmann, eds. Oxford: Berghahn Press. pp. 222-242.
“Seeing Health Like a Colonial State: Assistant Medical Practitioners and Nascent Biomedical Citizenship in the New Hebrides” in Senses and Citizenships: Embodying Political Life, S. Trnka, J. Park and C. Dureau, eds. New York: Routledge. pp. 200-220.
“Making Mothers: The Changing Relationships of Birth and Raising Children in Pango Village, Vanuatu” in An Anthropology of Mothering, Michelle Walks and Naomi MacPherson, eds. Bradford: Demeter Press. pp. 102-114.
“Reproducing Life in Conditions of Abandonment in Oceania” Introduction to Special Issue on Reproductive Abandonment. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 23:4-5, 301-310, DOI: 10.1080/14442213.2022.2115543 (With Jenny Munro, first Author).
“Health and Medicine during and after the Pacific War: Pacific Islanders, Institutions, Infrastructure, Ingenuities.” Introduction to Special Issue. Health and History 23(2): 1-13. (with Christine Winter).
Widmer, Alexandra. 2021. "Locating Low-Protein Life: Post-War Colonial Nutrition Science, Subsistence Metabolisms and Food Cultures in the South-Western Pacific Islands," Food, Culture and Society, 24(4), 525–542.
Widmer, A. (2021). Positioning Human Microbiome DTC Tests: On the Search for Health, Data and Alternatives Amid the Financialisation of Life. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 8(2), 1-12.
“The Imbalanced Sex-Ratio and the High Bride Price: Watermarks of Race in Demography and the Colonial Regulation of Reproduction” Special Issue, “Technologies of Belonging: Biology, Race and Ethnicity in Europe”, Amade M'charek, Katharina Schramm and David Skinner, eds. Science, Technology and Human Values 39(4): 538-560.
“Making Blood ‘Melanesian’: Fieldwork and Isolating Techniques in Genetic Epidemiology (1963–1976)” Special Issue, “Making Human Heredity: Populations, Life Sciences and Public Health in the Post-War Era”, Jenny Bangham and Soraya de Chadarevian, eds. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 47(Part A): 118-129.
“Of Temporal Politics and Demographic Anxieties: ‘Young Mothers’ in Demographic Predictions and Social Life in Vanuatu” Anthropologica 55(2): 317-328.
“Diversity as Valued and Troubled: Social Identities and Demographic Categories in understandings of Rapid Urban Growth in Vanuatu” Special Issue “Medical Crises, Diversification and Mainstreaming”, David Parkin, Kristine Krause and Gabriele Alex, eds. Anthropology and Medicine 20(2): 142-159.
“From Research Encounters to Metropolitan Debates: The Making and Meaning of the Melanesian ‘Race’ during Demographic Decline”. Paideuma: Mitteilungen zur Kulturkunde 58: 69-93
“Native Medical Practitioners, Temporality and Nascent Biomedical Citizenship in the New Hebrides”. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 30(s1): 57-80.
“The Effects of Elusive Knowledge: Census, Health Laws and Inconsistently Modern Subjects in Early Colonial Vanuatu”. Journal of Legal Anthropology 1(1): 92-116.
Approach to Teaching
Past Courses Taught
Biomedicine in the 20th Century (STS)
Health and Illness in Cross-Cultural Context: Learning and Doing Medical Anthropology
Critical Issues in Medical Anthropology
Anthropology of Global Health
Anthropology of Science and Technology
Sex, Love and Marriage: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Kinship
Current Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2025 | GS/ANTH5000 6.0 | A | Graduate Seminar in Ethnographic Researc | SEMR |
