Quantitative care: Caring for the aggregate in US academic population health sciences

Independence with others: Lessons for anthropology from postdocs in team science

Despite critiques from inside the discipline of anthropology, the figure of the "lone wolf" anthropologist perdures in the ways sociocultural doctoral students are (and are not) trained. Failure to prepare graduates to engage in substantive interdisciplinary collaboration poorly prepares them for careers inside and outside academia, and limits their capacity to meaningfully apply their research to pressing problems of the day. An increasing share of graduates occupy precarious postdoctoral positions in the humanities and social sciences; these are temporary posts from which they might continue to conduct research in precarity and relative isolation. To the extent that they are acknowledged at all, postdocs are worried over as signs of the crisis in academic hiring. Certain postdoctoral positions, however, can offer training in "team science," research conducted by interdisciplinary teams whose members meaningfully work together to apply for funding, design a research protocol, collect data, analyze data, and publish and present findings. Drawing on our own experiences, we propose taking the "fellowship" in "postdoctoral fellowship" as an epistemological challenge to anthropology to produce knowledge in the company of others.

Structural competency in epidemiological research: What's feasible, what's tricky, and the benefits of a 'structural turn'

Structural competency is an emerging paradigm for both the training of health professionals and the creation of a common language addressing structural processes that determine health disparities. However, its application to the field of epidemiological design and research is absent. Based on our previous proposal of a tool for Structural and Intercultural Competency in Epidemiological Studies, the SICES guidelines, in this article we analyse the possibilities and challenges of a 'structural turn' in epidemiology. In terms of possibilities, we recognise the value of paradigms from multiple parts of the world, such as social and sociocultural epidemiology, critical epidemiology and collective health, in facilitating a structural turn in epidemiological studies. In this framework, structural competency would provide a new angle by focusing not only on what to research (e.g. inequalities), but with what skills and attitudes (e.g. cultural and epistemic humility). The challenges lie in the inclusion of reflexivity and a comprehensive view in the context of a positivist epidemiology oriented towards obtaining evidence from a biomedical, but not social, perspective.

Epidemiologizing Culture: Scaling Chineseness through Narratives of Stigma in New York City

Drawing on 18 months of participation on an epidemiological research team and close analysis of in-depth interviews the team conducted with 30 Chinese immigrants to New York City, this article traces a process I call epidemiologizing culture. In producing qualitative interview data from Chinese immigrants at risk for HIV, team members smoothed over individual variation to extract elements thought to be relevant to population-level experiences of "Chinese culture." Relevance was determined based on how closely the experiences of participants mirrored the behavior of a Chinese ideal type. Interviewer and interviewee collaborated in articulating and reproducing homophobic and HIV-phobic discourses associated with Chinese culture while erasing details of lived experience, and conflating race and culture. I conclude that differing epistemic virtues make an epidemiological embrace of contemporary anthropological understandings of culture difficult. A model of "parallel play" may be an alternative approach to interdisciplinary synthesis.

Global Mental Health: Interdisciplinary challenges for a field in motion

In recent years, efforts in Global Mental Health (GMH) have evolved alongside critical engagement with the field's claims and interventions. GMH has shifted its agenda and epistemological underpinnings, increased its evidence base, and joined other global policy platforms such as the Sustainable Development Goals. This editorial introduction to a thematic issue traces the recent shifts in the GMH agenda and discusses the changing construct of "mental health" as GMH moves away from a categorical biomedical model toward dimensional and transdiagnostic approaches and embraces digital technologies. We highlight persistent and emerging lines of inquiry and advocate for meaningful interdisciplinary engagement. Taken together, the articles in this special issue of Transcultural Psychiatry provide a snapshot of current interdisciplinary work in GMH that considers the socio-cultural and historical dimensions of mental health important and proposes reflexive development of interventions and implementation strategies.