Sharon Abramowitz is Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security. She is a medical anthropologist who specializes in community engagement, mental health, gender violence, epidemic preparedness and response. She has been a leading global advocate for building national community engagement capacity, strengthening integrated analytics (IOA) and social science, risk communications, and community engagement (RCCE) capacity, metrics, and utilization in public health emergencies.
She is presently on the editorial board of the Journal for Humanitarian Affairs, and is honorary faculty at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. She is the author of the Inter-Agency Minimum Quality Standards and Indicators for Community Engagement and the monograph Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War, co-editor of the book Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice, and has written for Nature Human Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, The Lancet, Global Public Health, PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, and the Journal of Infectious Disease. Lastly, Abramowitz leads Communitology, an initiative that connects social science researcher/country-of-origin experts with asylum seekers in the UK, US, Canada, and Europe.
Addiction/drugs/drug policy, Caste discrimination or persecution, Child soldiers, Climate-related issues, Coercive population control, Deportees/criminal deportees, Disability, Ethnic discrimination or persecution, Ex-combatant reintegration, Female genital mutilation/circumcision/FGC, Forced conscription, Forced marriage, Gang-related violence/non-state actors, Gender-based violence/domestic violence, Healthcare access/health systems capacity, HIV/AIDS, Journalist persecution, Land tenure disputes, LGBTQ, Likelihood of destitution or homelessness, Mental illness, Military/police service, Political persecution, Prison conditions, Religious discrimination or persecution, Government/state actor persecution, Risk of retaliation, Safe internal relocation, Sexual abuse/assault, Specialized medical services, Sufficiency of protection, Torture, Trafficking, Tribal discrimination or persecution, Violence against children/child abuse
I have personally drafted over 70 country of origin expert reports in the UK, Canada, EU, USA, and Asia. I have directly overseen the writing of over 750 expert reports as the founder and director of Communitology.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Abramowitz, SA. (2014). Searching for Normal in the Wake of the Liberian War. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Abramowitz, SA. and Catherine Panter-Brick, Eds. (2015) Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Abramowitz, SA. (in research) Behind the War on Gender Violence: Tracking the Hidden Histories of Sex, Culture and Power in Liberia’s Past and Present.
Peer Reviewed Papers
Abramowitz, S. (2017) “Epidemics (Especially Ebola).” Annual Review of Anthropology (46) pp.421-445.
Abramowitz, SA, McKune SL, Fallah, M., Monger, J., Tehoungue, K., Omidian, PA. C. (2017) “The Opposite of Denial: Social Learning at the Onset of the Ebola Emergency in Liberia.” Health Communications.
Abramowitz, SA. (2016) “Humanitarian Morals and Money: Health Sector Financing and the Prelude to the Liberian Ebola Epidemic.” Critical African Studies vol. 8 (3) pp.319-334.
Abramowitz, SA., McLean, K. McKune SL, Fallah, M., Monger, J., Tehoungue, K., Omidian, PA. “General Morbidity and Health-Seeking Behaviors in a context of Ebola Mortality: Monrovia, Liberia in the West African Ebola Epidemic.” Global Public Health pp.1-17. Published online http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2016.1208262.
Abramowitz, SA., McKune SL, Bardosh, K., Fallah, M., Monger, J., Tehoungue, K., Omidian, PA. (2015) Community-Centered Responses to Ebola in Urban Liberia: The View from Below. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0003706. Published 9 April 2015.
Good, B., Delvecchio-Good, MJ, Abramowitz, S., A Kleinman, C Panter-Brick. “Medical Humanitarianism: Research Insights into a Changing Field of Practice.” Social Science & Medicine 2014 (120) 311-316. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.09.027.
Abramowitz, SA., Meredith Marten, and Catherine Panter-Brick. (2014) “Medical Humanitarianism: Anthropologists Speak Out on Policy and Practice.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. doi: 10.1111/maq.12139.
Abramowitz, SA. and Mary Moran. (2012) “International Human Rights, Gender-Based Violence, and Discourses of Abuse in Post-Conflict Liberia: A Problem of ‘Culture?’” African Studies Review 55(2) p.119-46.
Abramowitz, SA. (2011) “Trauma in Liberia: The Tale of Open