Professor Lauren Carruth (pronounced “cuh-ROOTH”) is Chair of the Department of Environment, Development & Health at American University’s School of International Service. She also directs graduate certificates in Humanitarian Policy & Practice and Global Health & Culture.
She is a medical anthropologist by training, specializing in humanitarian assistance, global health, nutrition, migration, and the Horn of Africa.
Dr. Carruth’s research focuses on five themes: (1) labor and inequity within the aid industry, (2) irregular labor migrations between Ethiopia and Gulf States, (3) the relationship between food insecurity, medical insecurity, and diabetes, (4) nutritional wasting in emergencies, and (5) emerging zoonotic diseases in the Horn of Africa.
Dr. Carruth’s 2021 book, “Love and Liberation: Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia’s Somali Region,” was published in 2021 by Cornell University Press. Her work is funded by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, and she has been published in journals including The Lancet, BMJ, Social Science & Medicine, Culture Medicine & Psychiatry, Global Public Health, The Journal of Modern African Studies, and Disasters, as well as in Scientific American and the Washington Post.
