Expertise

anthropology & public health; Southeast Asia & the US; program evaluation, health services research, qualitative research methods, mixed methods, behavioral health, HIV/AIDS, trauma

Profile

Nina (Cornelia) Kammerer, an anthropologist and public health researcher, teaches qualitative research methods in the Heller PhD program. She has previously taught in Brandeis University's Department of Anthropology, where she introduced a course on AIDS in the early 1990s. Ms. Kammerer has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork among Tibeto-Burman-speaking Akha of Northern Thailand. In 1993, she served as Principal Investigator on a study, funded by the American Foundation for AIDS Research, of sociocultural risk and protective factors for HIV/AIDS among four highland minorities in Thailand. To strengthen her knowledge of epidemiology and biostatistics, Ms. Kammerer obtained a master's degree from Boston University School of Public Health in 1997. From 1997 to 2004, she was a Senior Researcher at Health and Addictions Research, Inc., a Boston-based research, evaluation, and quality improvement consulting firm that specialized in behavioral health. She has published articles and book chapters on asymmetric marriage alliance, Christian conversion, ethnic identity, and Thai government policies towards highland minorities. With Nicola Tannenbaum, she co-edited two volumes on religion published in the Yale University Southeast Asian Studies monograph series. In addition to publications on HIV/AIDS in Thailand, she has co-authored two book chapters on HIV/AIDS risk, prevention, and care among transgenders in the United States. A recent resource paper on trauma and retraumatization is available online as part of the After the Crisis Initiative: Healing from Trauma after Disasters of SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services. Currently, Ms. Kammerer is preparing to conduct field research in Catalonia, Spain.