Laurie Denyer Willis

Dr Laurie Denyer Willis is a Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science. She uses a multimodal approach to ethnography to explore the relationships between the sensory lives of bodies, suburban environments, religion, and global health. Her research interests include:

• Religion
• Bodies and governance
• Capitalism & affect
• Feminist politics
• Post-colonialism
• Multimodality
• Sensory Politics
• Politics of global health 
• AMR
• Suburbanism.

Laurie’s first book project, “A Politics of Grace: Evangelicalism & Affective Politics in Rio de Janeiro’s Subúrbios”, is based on long-term engagement in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and will be part of the Atelier Series at the University of California Press.  The book considers how Evangelical Christianity shapes ideas about urban space, bodies and feeling, and political life in Brazil by thinking through sensory experience, affect, religious life and anti-Black practice.  Her recent outputs include:

• Laurie Denyer Willis (2020) In Attention to Pain: Governance and Bodies in Brazil, Medical Anthropology, 39:4, 348-360, DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2020.1740216
• Sandra Teresa Hyde & Laurie Denyer Willis (2020) Balancing the Quotidian: Precarity, Care and Pace in Anthropology’s Storytelling, Medical Anthropology, 39:4, 297-304, DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2020.1739673.