Seth M. Holmes
Cultural and Medical Anthropologist & Physician
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Social Medicine

Social Medicine

Along with other faculty, students and staff in the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine, several projects have been undertaken including a special issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine on Social Medicine in the Twenty First Century, the New England Journal of Medicine series “Case Studies in Social Medicine,” and The Lancet Global Social Medicine Case Series.

The Case of the Human: Co-Producing Plural Knowledge on the Body, the Social, and the Subject is a collaborative research project at The University of Chicago Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Medical and humanistic understandings of health and well-being have intersected in recent decades, but the category of “the human” continues to be defined and applied in different ways. This project sought to identify a more holistic understanding of “the human” that is neither primarily medical nor humanistic, generating critically and clinically innovative knowledge. In September 2024, humanities, social science, and medicine scholars traveled from across the world to the Neubauer Collegium to workshop cases of real patients and communities in order to engage in new conceptual work together.

These cases have continued to develop after the conference, culminating in a collaborative case series titled Cases in Global Social Medicine, which will be published monthly in The Lancet starting in Fall 2025. Please find the link to each case below:

This project was made possible through the generous support of multiple universities, centers, and organizations, including the Harvard University, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Pasqual Maragall Foundation, University of Barcelona, University of California Alianza MX, University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, and Uppsala University.

UC Berkeley, UChicago, and Univeresity of Barcelona Project Websites:

Case Series Kick-off Events:

Press: