Holly Wardlow

Biography:
Trained in both socio-cultural anthropology and public health, Dr. Wardlow is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Toronto (St. George), and currently serves as the Interim Director for the ICHS. Her early research in Papua New Guinea focused on “passenger women” – women who exchange sex for money, but whose life histories and motivations do not easily align with the assumptions often brought to terms such as “sex work” or “transactional sex.” More recent research includes “Love, Marriage, and HIV: A Multi-Sited Ethnographic Study of Gender and HIV Risk.” Funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, this comparative project investigated married women’s risk for HIV in five countries: Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda, and Vietnam. Most recently, Dr. Wardlow has conducted research on the lived experience of being HIV-positive and in treatment in Papua New Guinea. She is now writing a book that tells the story of HIV/AIDS in Tari, Papua New Guinea through women’s eyes, from the environments and social relations that made them vulnerable to HIV (e.g. mining sites and political turmoil) to their variable experiences of love, acceptance, or violent rejection upon receiving a positive diagnosis.
Research Interests:
Gender, Sexuality, and HIV
Gender and Interpersonal Violence
Tensions between Personhood and Patient-hood
Teaching Interests:
Global Health
Gender and Health
Theory in Anthropology
Love, Sex, and Marriage
Awards and Grants:
2013 Visiting Scholar, La Trobe University
2012 Visiting Scholar, University of Lucerne
2012 Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Australian National University,
2011 Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2010: The Secret: Love, Marriage, and HIV.
2008-2014 SSHRC Standard Research Grant: “The Moral Politics of ‘Reliable’ Personhood and the Social Life of Antiretroviral Therapy Policy in Papua New Guinea.”
2003-2007 NIH Research Grant: “Love, Marriage, and HIV: A Multi-Sited Ethnographic Study of Gender and HIV Risk.” (Co-Investigator) Principal Investigator: Jennifer Hirsch. Other Co-Investigators: Daniel Smith, Shanti Parikh, Harriet Phinney, Constance Nathanson.
Publications:
Books
2010 Jennifer Hirsch, Holly Wardlow, Daniel Smith, Shanti Parikh, Harriet Phinney, and Constance Nathanson. The Secret: Love, Marriage, and HIV. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
2006 Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Articles and Book Chapters
In press “HIV, Phone Friends, and Affective Technology in Papua New Guinea.” In, R. Foster and H. Horst (eds.), The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones in the Pacific. Canberra: ANU Press.
2017 “The (Extra)ordinary Ethics of Being HIV-positive in Rural Papua New Guinea.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(1): 103 – 119.
2014 “Paradoxical Intimacies: the Christian Creation of the Huli Domestic Sphere.” In Hyaeweol Choi and Margaret Jolly (eds.), Divine Domesticities: Christian Paradoxes in Asia and the Pacific, pp. 325-344. Canberra: Australian National University Press.
2012 “The Task of the HIV Translator: Transforming Global AIDS Knowledge in an Awareness Workshop.” Medical Anthropology 31(5): 404-419.
2007 “Men’s Extramarital Sexuality in Rural Papua New Guinea.” American Journal of Public Health 97(6): 1006-1014.
Affiliations:
Canadian Anthropology Society
American Anthropological Association
Society for Medical Anthropology
American Ethnological Society
Melanesian Interest Group
Association for Feminist Anthropology
Education:
PhD, Anthropology, Emory University
MPH, International Health, Emory University
BA, Literature, Yale University