Rate My Professor Ruth Fitzgerald

Professor Ruth Fitzgerald serves as Head of the Social Anthropology programme in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology within the University of Otago's Division of Humanities. She earned her PhD from the University of Otago in 1998 with a thesis titled 'Who cares? An ethnographic investigation of the meaning of care.' A Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, her research centers on medical anthropology, particularly ideologies in health, practices of care, moral reasoning in health dilemmas, clinical anthropology, oral health, and biotechnologies of health in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her work explores the cultural significance of genetic testing, termination of pregnancy, scientists as health workers, embodied risks of consumption such as food scares, and media constructions of these technologies. She employs qualitative methods including ethnography, grounded theory, narrative theory, media analysis, and embodiment studies, often in interdisciplinary collaborations between sciences and humanities. Key projects include investigations into health policy, health practitioners, disability, new technologies in New Zealand medicine, lay meanings of oral health, and the Critical Disability Studies Research Network, which she directs.