Laboratory for Genetic Epidemiology


http://www.genepi.org.au

Dr Emma Kowal

Emma is a postdoctoral research fellow supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Training Fellowship. She is a cultural anthropologist and has previously worked as a doctor and public health researcher in Indigenous health settings.

Her work in Indigenous health research included projects on mental health/social and emotional wellbeing, Indigenous community health initiatives, child health, injury prevention, medical informatics, and qualitative evaluation.

In 2006 she completed her PhD which was an ethnography of white middle-class left-wing people who work in Indigenous health. It broadly examined the project of postcolonial justice, that is, reversing the harms of colonisation on Indigenous people.

Her current research project takes her interest in racial politics and health in a new direction. In collaboration with Indigenous researchers and genetic epidemiologists, she is undertaking an ethnography of genetic research with Indigenous communities in Western Australia. She is interested in how genomics is changing the way we think about difference and relatedness. Among other things, she will look at how genetic epidemiologists use ethnoracial classifications in the field and the lab, and at how Indigenous people mobilise discourses of genetics to support or to trouble concepts of Indigeneity and kinship.

Qualifications

  • MBBS (Melb), BA (Hons) (Melb), Grad Cert ATSI Studies (NTU), PhD (Melb)

Research Interests

  • The anthropology of public health
  • Australian race politics, especially Indigeneity and Whiteness
  • Colonialism and postcolonialism
  • Technoscience, especially the new genetics
  • All aspects of Indigenous health
  • Bioethical paradigms
  • The anthropology of development

Publications

  1. Lea T, Kowal E, Cowlishaw G. eds. (2006) Moving Anthropology: Critical Indigenous Studies. Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin, pp1-244.
  2. Kowal E. (2006) "Moving towards the mean: Dilemmas of assimilation and improvement.", in Lea, T., Kowal, E. and Cowlishaw, G., eds. Moving Anthropology: Critical Indigenous Studies. Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin, pp65-78.
  3. Cowlishaw G, Kowal E, Lea T. (2006) "Introduction: Double Binds", in Lea, T., Kowal, E. and Cowlishaw, G., eds. Moving Anthropology: Critical Indigenous Studies. Charles Darwin University Press, Darwin, pp1-16.
  4. Kowal E. (2006) The Proximate Advocate: Improving Indigenous Health on the Postcolonial Frontier. PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne.
  5. Kowal E, Gunthorpe W, Bailie R. (accepted) Measuring Emotional and Social Wellbeing in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations: An analysis of a Negative Life Events Scale. International Journal of Equity in Health.
  6. Kowal E. (2006) "Mutual Obligation and Indigenous Health: Thinking through incentives and obligations", Medical Journal of Australia 184(6): 292-3.
  7. Kowal E, Paradies Y. (2005) Ambivalent helpers and unhealthy choices: Public health practitioners’ narratives of Indigenous ill-health. Social Science & Medicine 60:1347-57.
  8. Kowal E, Anderson I, Bailie R. (2005) "Moving Beyond Good Intentions: Indigenous Participation in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research." Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 29(5):468-470.
  9. Kowal E, Donohoe P, Lonergan K, Ulamari H, Bailie R. (2005) Dust, Distance and Discussion: Fieldwork Experiences from the Housing Improvement and Child Health Study. Environmental Health 5(3):46-59.
  10. Kowal E. (2006) Sex in Development: Science, Sexuality and Morality in Global Perspective (book review). Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 30(1):94.
  11. Kowal E. (2006) Aboriginal Suicide is Different, 2nd ed. (book review). Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 30(4):393-394.
  12. Kowal E. (2005) Contesting Assimilation (book review). API Review of Books 38.
  13. Kowal E. (2005) Elders, Experts and Entrepreneurs: A Postcolonial Analysis of the Governance Debate. Paper presented to the North Australian Research Unit, Australian National University, Darwin, October 26th, 2005.