American medical anthropologist; Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1976). Scheper-Hughes has done fieldwork in Ireland, Brazil and South Africa, on such themes as mental illness, violence, infant mortality, hunger, and (in the U.S.) de-institutionalization. Her studies in Brazil span a period of more than 25 years. A politically engaged and feminist orientation has continued to characterize her work in latter years, as she has entered upon studies of such subjects as AIDS, international adoption, violence against street children, and the global traffic in body organs. The latter interest led her (in 1999) to co-found Organs Watch, an organization devoted to investigating human rights violations in the international human organs trade. Scheper-Hughes has published widely for an academic as well as a non-academic public, and many of her books have achieved a broad readership and been translated into several languages.

Click here to read an interview with Nancy Scheper-Hughes:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Scheper-Hughes/sh-con0.html