Dr. Jennifer Hirsch's research focuses on gender, sexuality, and reproductive health, U.S.-Mexico migration and migrant health, and the applications of anthropological theory and methods to public health research and programs. Her published work has appeared in journals such as American Journal of Public Health, AIDS, Culture Health and Sexuality, and Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Her books include the 2003 landmark volume, A Courtship After Marriage: Sexuality and Love in Mexican Transnational Families, published by University of California Press, which explored changing ideas and practices of love, sexuality and marriage among Mexicans in the U.S. and in Mexico, and two edited volumes on the comparative anthropology of love (Modern Loves, edited with Holly Wardlow, and Love and Globalization, edited with Mark Padilla, Richard Parker, Miguel Muñoz Laboy, and Robert Sember). She is also lead author of the new co-authored volume The Secret: Love, Marriage and HIV, which presents findings from a recently completed NIH-funded comparative ethnographic study that explores the factors that put married women at risk for HIV infection in five countries: Mexico, Nigeria, Uganda, Vietnam, and Papua New Guinea.

Hirsch is currently principal investigator of an NIH-funded capacity building grant, The STAR Partnership (Co-PI: Richard Parker, Ph.D.). This five-year collaboration between Mailman School faculty (primarily those in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences) and investigators at Hanoi Medical University in Vietnam will contribute to the development of a center of excellence in social science approaches to HIV and AIDS research at HMU. She is also principal investigator of an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act-funded one year planning grant, Life Projects and Anti-retroviral Therapy, the goal of which is to work with the same team of investigators from the Love Marriage and HIV project to develop a competitive application to conduct comparative multi-site ethnographic research on the social impacts of scaled up access to anti-retroviral therapy.

Recently completed Study:

Love, Marriage, and HIV: Gender and HIV Risk
Jennifer Hirsch, Ph.D.

<back to top>