Who We Are

My training as a medical and visual anthropologist, and my scholarship in gender studies shape my approach to all the projects I undertake. This training and scholarship provide me with a deep understanding of how social histories affect the dynamics of the present; an appreciation of the strengths and gifts that culture and identity can confer on communities; and a critical awareness of the differing impacts social policy and programming can have on the health and human rights of different demographics and populations.

I am drawn to the stories that people tell, and I have a deep respect for the experiences that shape their lives and perspectives. In my work, I use ethnographic, participatory, and arts-based research methods to elicit people’s stories, to help them uncover their truths, and to develop insights that can inform the development of new processes or policies. These qualitative methods allow me to gather information that disrupts the stories that are told about a community, and instead lets them tell the story that most closely reflects their reality and that centers their interpretation.

My work takes me to where people are, and I meet with them face-to-face to listen. I meet them in the post-industrial spaces of Philadelphia, in settings that continue to bear the scars and dysfunction of conflict and colonialism including Cambodia and Somalia, in communist government settings like Viet Nam, and in multi-ethnic democracies such as Fiji.

My projects are solutions-oriented, derived from a bottom-up perspective to learn from those who experience a problem. Some projects explore the knowledge base of hidden populations of drug users, sex workers, and other stigmatized populations to learn from them about how best to design health programming. Other projects seek insights from highly educated medical professionals about the stigma they feel toward people with substance use disorder so as to create pathways for providers to start prescribing life-saving buprenorphine to patients who want to stop or reduce their opioid use. Still other projects seek to learn from doctors, midwives, nurse practitioners and nurses in post-colonial health care settings about how they respond to cases of child abuse. These child protection projects seek to learn from health care providers what their current practices are when they have a child patient who has been abused or neglected, and to help them provide children with care that reflects international best practices. My clients in these projects are organizations such as the Philadelphia Department of Public Health with projects funded by the CDC and the Council of State and Tribal Epidemiologists; UNICEF Cambodia; MSF Brussels in Cambodia; UNICEF Viet Nam; UNICEF and the Global Fund in Somalia; and UNICEF Fiji.

Community well-being is also an important focus in my work, and I have partnered with Scribe Video to help Philadelphia-area community organizations craft their own film about a place or space that is important to them. Topics of these collaborative film projects include community gardens and gentrification, Native Americans and access to land, and the legacy of Paul Robeson in West Philadelphia. I have also partnered with New Jersey film-maker Dana Master and Philadelphia domestic violence organizations to produce pro bono public service announcements about the continued availability of protective services during the COVID-19 pandemic. And my work with Centro de Nueva Creación is an opportunity to help the organization highlight the growth work they are doing to build resiliency among elementary school children enrolled in their afterschool program.

I’m currently an Adjunct Fellow for the Center for Public Health Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, and I have held full-time faculty appointments at Rutgers, Temple University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania where I taught courses in medical anthropology, visual anthropology, gender studies and ethnographic methods, among many others. I’m a frequent guest lecturer at different universities in Philadelphia and beyond, and I co-led an ethnographic field school teaching visual research methods to students interested in fracking’s effects on the environment and local communities. I also teach workshops on qualitative research methods to organizations to help build their capacity to conduct research and to critically evaluate research designs, and I design Train the Trainer materials when needed. In my free time, I am a beekeeper, gardener, photographer, and dreamer.

Currently Dana is a producer and project manager for No More Nice Girls Media Arts which is a media arts organization founded by media activist, artist, and writer, Joan Braderman. Dana’s previous work experience includes work as an instructor and interim program manager at Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia where she also served as video facilitator for the Precious Places Community History Project for two years. She has also worked as a segment producer/editor for NJTV’s “Classroom Close-up, NJ” for which she earned six Emmy nominations and two Emmy wins. Using her past experience as a practicing and exhibiting media artist, Dana designed and implemented a creative “technology” curriculum for the adolescent program at Montessori Academy of NJ in Delran, NJ. The curriculum introduced concepts of media literacy and hands-on learning in video production and Adobe CC applications.

She enjoys working for organizations whose missions she feels passionate about, and recently collaborated with Women Against Abuse to produce a public service announcement targeting women who are experiencing intimate partner violence during the Covid-19 pandemic. This aired on several Philadelphia television stations.