Academic interests
Heidi Fjeld holds a doctoral degree in social anthropology and is a professor of medical anthropology at Helsam. Through her early studies of social organization among farmers in Tibet, she became interested in how health and medical practices are closely linked to the social, cultural, economic and political dimentions of people's lives. Central to her academic interests is, on the one hand, the vast cultural variations in how people perceive the body's constitution, the causes of illness, and what is considered good or poor health, as well as relevant treatments. On the other hand, she focuses on how these understandings form – and are formed – by social and religious life. Her research interests follow three main trajectories: 1) health, medicine and food in the Himalayas, often in settings where biomedical health services are only partially available (Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan), 2) antibiotic trajectories and antimicrobial resistance in the global south and 3) health and access to services for transmigrants, that is, people who reside temporarily between different places.
Currently, Fjeld leads the RCN funded project From Asia to Africa: Antibiotic trajectories across the Indian Ocean (SAMKUL, 2020-2025). This project brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, combining methods and perspectives from the humanities, social sciences and medicine to investigate how active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and generic antibiotics are produced, regulated and exported from China and India to Africa, and particularly Tanzania. Fjeld is particularly interested in anthropological perpectives on pharmaceuticals on the one hand, and China as a global health actor, on the other hand. Moreover, Fjeld is a research member of the RCN funded EATWELL, an interdisciplinary research project that examines food systems in Bhutan in their entanglements with culture, society, environment, health, and nutrition (FRIPRO, 2021-2027).
Starting in January 2026, Fjeld will, together with Anne Kveim Lie, be leading the RCN funded project Bridging the Healthcare Gap: Improving Access for Temporary Labor Migrants in Norway (BRIDGE).
Fjeld coordinates the research group Social Medicine, an interdisciplinary group that develops action-research projects in close collaboration between researchers, users as well as non-profit and public service providers. The group's primary focus is migration, particularly health and access to healthcare services for transmigrants in Oslo.
Regional expertise: Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Himalaya, Norway, Tanzania
Teaching
INTHE4019: Fundamentals of International Community Health
INTHE4113: Introduction to Medical Anthropology
INTHE4022: Advanced Module in Qualitative Methods
INTHE4118: Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights
MF9140: Qualitative Research Methods (Course Leader)
HES9280: Medical Anthropology: Current Themes and Theories
MF9295: Global Health (Course Leader)
MF9185: Critical Perspectives on Health and Disease
MED3002: Kvalitative metoder i helseforskning (Course Leader)
MED3052: Global Health
MED5700: Medisinstudiet, Modul 7
MED4500R: Medisinstudiet, Modul 5
MED1100: Medisinstudiet, Modul 1
Background
Fjeld obtained her doctoral degree from the Department of Social Anthropology (2007) with the dissertation 'The Rise of the Polyandrous House: Marriage, Kinship, and Social Mobility in Rural Tsang, Tibet.' From 2007 to 2012, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher and senior researcher in the Section of Medical Anthropology and Medical History, and she has been a permanent staff member of Helsam since 2014. Fjeld has been a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for the Studies of Societal Issues at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Positions held
- Chair of the Committee for Gender Equality and Diversity (LIM Committee) at the Faculty of Medicine
- Deputy Member of the Board of Global Health Norway