Centre for South Asian Studies

Profile

Ian Harper is a trained medical practitioner who has worked in hospital medicine and general practice in the UK. For three and a half years he managed a tuberculosis control project in Nepal, and for two years worked with NGOs throughout India in supporting community health programmes. His experiences of practicing medicine and public health in such diverse cultural and political situations led him to study medical anthropology. 

He served on the ASA committee as the ethics officer (2005-7) and is a co-founder of Anthropology Matters, the ASA's national web-based postgraduate network. He was secretary of the Britain Nepal Academic Council till 2014 and was an associate editor of the International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. He was chair of the organising committee of the 2014 ASA Decennial Conference run jointly with the Social Anthropology departments of the University of Aberdeen and University of St Andrews, under the STAR consortium. 

He was the founding Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology.