Dr Benjamin Kasstan
MSc PhD
Research Fellow
Medical Anthropology
LSHTM
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
United Kingdom
I am a medical anthropologist based in the Department of Global Health and Development and the NIHR-funded Health Protection Research Unit in Immunisation. Over the past ten years I have been investigating how health protection is constructed by minority populations and public health services, particularly issues around vaccines and immunizations, reproductive health, and sexuality education. My research has been published in discipline-leading journals, including Social Science & Medicine, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, and Vaccine. I am committed to the tangible translation of research expertise and I have been commissioned as an expert reviewer for the Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology, my research has been featured on GAVI's Vaccine Works and has been cited in WHO implementation guidance. Since 2019, I have served as Associate Editor of Anthropology & Medicine and I am a member of the Editorial Board of Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.
Affiliations
Research
Trained as a medical anthropologist, I have been immersed in interdsciplinary environments and my research is influenced by critical public health, health law, and bioethics. I am interested in how the transformative and transgressive possibilities of technology engender multiple, and at times opposing, quests and questions around health protection between minorities and the state. My research is primarily ethnographic, but also integrates archival research and discursive analysis to trace the production and construction of public health challenges over time. I am committed to developing theoretical knowledge as much as practical solutions around health protection. I have published widely on vaccines and immunization, and sexual and reproductive health and sexuality education.