Melbourne School of Population Health

Hans A. Baer is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences and the Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne. He earned a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Utah in 1976 and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Medical Anthropology Program at Michigan State University in 1979-1980.

He held regular positions at Kearney State College (1972-73); George Peabody College for Teachers (1976-1979); St. John’s University (1980-1981); the University of Southern Mississippi (1981-83); and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (1983-2005). He has been a visiting professor at Humboldt University in Berlin, University of California – Berkeley, Arizona State University, George Washington University, and Australian National University.

Hans has conducted research on the Hutterites in South Dakota, the Levites (a Mormon sect in Utah), African American Spiritual churches,  alternative medicine in the US, UK, and Australia; sociopolitical and religious life in East Germany, and conventional and alternative HIV clinics in a Western U.S. city.

Hans has published sixteen books, co-edited several special journal issues, and published some 160 book chapters and journal articles. Some of his books include Recreating Utopia in the Desert; African American Religion; Encounters with Biomedicine: Case Studies in Medical Anthropology; Critical Medical (with Merrill Singer); Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective (with Merrill Singer and Ida Susser); Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America: Issues of Class, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender; and Toward an Integrative Medicine; and Introducing Medical Anthropology (with Merrill Singer); Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health: Emerging Crises and Systemic Solutions (with Merrill Singer); and Complementary Medicine in Australia and New Zealand.

In early 2008 he began to investigate climate politics and the climate movement in Australia, an on-going project, and is presently writing a book on this topic. Hans served on the editorial board of Medical Anthropology in 1998-2000 and on the editorial board of Medical Anthropological Quarterly in 1998-2006 and again 2008-present. Hans considers himself a scholar-activist and has been involved various movements over the years, including peace, social justice, anti-apartheid, labor, socialist, environmental, and climate justice movements.  

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