David Ansari, PhD, MSc
Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Education
Faculty Affiliate, Department of Anthropology; Faculty Affiliate, Center for Global Health
Department of Medical Education
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About
David Ansari is an Assistant Professor of Medical Education and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Global Health. He is a health professions education (HPE) and health humanities scholar, and his interests focus on the social determinants of mental health and experiences of belonging in HPE. With a background in cultural and medical anthropology, he uses ethnographic and qualitative methods to examine how learners and professionals reflect on experiences of marginalization and their therapeutic and medical relevance.
His research uses a framework of haunting to demonstrate how HPE is both a space to address forms of oppression but may inadvertently reproduce oppression. His book, The Haunted Curriculum: Orchestrating Mental Health Care and Belonging in France, explores how mental health professionals and their students navigate race and belonging in psychotherapy for refugees and asylum seekers and their descendants. The book draws on ethnographic research in mental health clinics that use a therapeutic approach that unpacks the significance of how culture, origins, and displacement shape patients’ experiences of mental illness. The haunted curriculum refers to the ways that learners witness injustices in clinical settings, learn from patients who have experienced violence, and experience marginalization themselves.
While the haunted curriculum emerged in his work among budding psychotherapists in France, he has introduced this concept to HPE in an article in Medical Education he co-authored with HPE scholars who examine how learners grapple with racism and ableism in their training. Working with these scholars, he is guest editing a special issue of Social Science & Medicine that critically examines how HPE is a space that challenges and reproduces injustices.
Working closely with faculty, students, and staff in the College of Medicine, he is developing new projects that examine representation in simulation, and flourishing and wellbeing among first-generation medical students.
He completed his PhD at the University of Chicago and his MSc at the London School of Economics. Prior to completing his graduate studies, he was a Fulbright research scholar in Senegal, and a Post-baccalaureate Intramural Research Training Awardee (IRTA) at the National Institute on Aging. He has held academic positions at Washington University in St. Louis, Sciences Po, and King’s College London.