Emma Bunkley

Headshot of Emma Bunkley
Assistant Professor
Health and Behavioral Sciences

Office Location:

North Classroom 3023B

Office Hours:

Thursdays 10 a.m. to noon


Dr. Bunkley is a medical anthropologist interested in women’s health, global health, noncommunicable diseases, and embodiment. Her research has thus far focused on Senegalese women’s experiences with metabolic diseases to better understand changing social networks and kinship relationships. Blending a background in political science and sociocultural anthropology, Dr. Bunkley examines top-down structures, such as national level statistic making and global health systems, alongside daily experiences of women in and out of biomedical and traditional health establishments. Her research challenges the conflation of “women’s health” with reproductive and maternal health by highlighting the often-overlooked gendered aspects of chronic illness in both clinical settings and in public health.

Dr. Bunkley has two new research projects. The first project explores the intersection of environmental and human health through the circulation of plastics and their life cycles into hospital waste in Saint-Louis, Senegal. The second project examines Senegalese migrants’ experiences of navigating chronic disease in France.

Ph.D., 2021, University of Arizona (Medical Anthropology)

M.A., 2010, The New School for Social Research (Political Science)

B.A., 2007, Northern Arizona University (International Affairs)

William J. Robertson & Emma N. Bunkley. 2024. “Iatrogenic necropolitics: forced anal examinations and state-sanctioned homophobia.” Culture, Health & Sexuality https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2023.2203763

Bunkley, Emma Nelson, Comfort Asante, Sarah Burack, Lindsey Kaufman, Sam Miti, Jean Hunleth. 2023. “A Heart for the Care: Affect, Kin, and Care Work in a Zambian Hospital.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 38(1): 54-66 https://doi.org/10.1111/maq.12837

Allred, Rachel P., Ndèye Aminata Mbaye, Fatoumata Diagne, Melissa B. Harrell, Sheryl A. McCurdy, Emma Nelson Bunkley. 2023. “Food Insecurity Increases Risk for Depression and Anxiety Among Women in Senegal Living with Diabetes and/or Hypertension.” Journal of Public Health in Africa 14(10):2467 https://doi.org/10.4081/jphia.2023.2467

Powis, Richard and Emma Nelson Bunkley. 2023. “Handbooks and Health Interpreters: How Men are Assets for their Pregnant Partners in Senegal.” Social Science and Medicine 331 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.116074  

Bunkley, Emma Nelson. 2022. “Interembodiment, Inheritance, and Intergenerational Health.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 36(2) 256 – 271

Bunkley, Emma Nelson. 2021. "Diagnosing Diabetes, Diagnosing Colonialism: An Ethnography of the Classification and Counting of a Senegalese Metabolic Disease." Medicine Anthropology Theory 8 (2): 1–26.

Chileshe, Mutale, Emma Nelson Bunkley, Jean Hunleth. 2022. “The Rural Household Production of Health Approach: Applying Lessons from Zambia to Rural Cancer Disparities in the U.S.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(2) 974.