Arthur Kleinman

Arthur Kleinman

Senior Fellow

As a Senior Fellow of the Institute, Arthur Kleinman will undertake and lead research projects.  Arthur is a prominent figure across multiple disciplines, including medical anthropology, cultural psychiatry, global health, social medicine, and medical humanities.

He is currently the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology, Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, and the Victor and William Fung Director at Harvard University Asia Center. He is a member of Harvard’s Council on Asian Studies, and of its Center for the Study of World Religions. 

A former Guggenheim Fellow, Arthur is an Honorary Professor at Fudan University (Shanghai), the Cleveringa Professor at the University of Leiden and Royal Society Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as being a distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He was also a member of the National Institute of Health’s Council of Councils.

Arthur is the author of several books and many  articles, book chapters, and papers.  His co-authored collaborative volume entitled “Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. What Anthropology and Psychiatry Teach Us About China Today” will be published in September 2011 by the University of California Press.

Arthur has conducted research in China and in Taiwan since the 70s. He recently completed a collaborative study with health economists from the Harvard School of Public Health on the health consequences of rural-urban migration in China, in addition to conducting studies on stigma in China with Professor Sing Lee of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

A graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Medical School, with a master’s degree in social anthropology from Harvard, Arthur trained in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Areas of Expertise/Research Interests:

  • The experience of illness
  • Social suffering, social and mental health
  • Global Health
  • Caregiving
  • China, Taiwan, North America