Omar Dewachi

Biography

Omar Dewachi is Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA. His work examines the social, medical and environmental impact of decades of war and violence in Iraq and the wider region and his research interests include biopolitics, war, colonialism, global health, and the Iraqi state.

Dewachi curated Field Photography: The Marsh Arabs of Iraq, 1934—a critical documentation of an expedition led by physical anthropologist Henry Field to carry out a survey of the region’s people—at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Cambridge (2004–2005).

His award-winning book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (Stanford University Press, 2017), narrates the untold history of the rise and fall of Iraq’s healthcare system under decades of US-led interventions. Dewachi has published numerous peer-reviewed articles, including Antimicrobial resistance in the context of the Syrian conflict: drivers before and after the onset of conflict and key recommendations (International Journal of Microbiology, 2018) and (Dis)Connectivities in Wartime: The Therapeutic Geographies of Iraqi healthcare seeking in Lebanon (Global Public Health, 2017).

He received the Global Challenges Research Fund from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), under which he was Co-Principal Investigator at the American University of Beirut for the Research for Health in Conflict: Developing capability, partnership and research in the Middle and Near East project (2017–2020).

Dewachi earned his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) degree from the University of Baghdad in 1997. He holds an MA and a PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University (2004 and 2008 respectively).

Dewachi lives and works in New Brunswick, USA.

SAF participation:

March Meeting 2021