Emma Bunkley, Ph.D., is assistant professor in Health and Behavioral Sciences at University of Colorado Denver.

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. While a doctoral student at University of Arizona, Dr. Bunkley received the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and Fulbright IIE research awards for her work in Senegal, titled Diabetic Living. This research focuses on Senegalese women’s experiences with metabolic illness and explores social networks and kinship relations.

Dr. Bunkley has two new research projects. The first project is an extension of her research in Senegal, examining West African migrants’ experiences of navigating health systems in Denver, Colorado. This project is an important comparison of how chronic diseases circulate within global health. Her second project explores the experience of gestational diabetes in women and pregnant people in Denver Colorado. This project is interested in expanding systems of health surveillance and how these systems reinforce neoliberal ideas of personal responsibility.