PhD student, University of Virginia
Research Interests
Data science | Epidemiology | HIV/AIDS | Medical anthropology | Public health | Queer Studies | Southeast Asia |
About Richard Karl
Richard Karl Deang is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at the University of Virginia. He specializes in the anthropology of science, medicine, data, and technology as well as in gender and sexuality studies. His dissertation is about the construction of categories of people in global sexual health, with emphasis on "men who have sex with men" (MSM), a global demographic category used in HIV/AIDS research, policy, and intervention. With a regional focus in Southeast Asia, his dissertation is an ethnography and history of the movements and mutations of MSM and the impact of these changes on the lives of the people around the world who use this global health category. Fieldwork for this dissertation involves interviews with epidemiologists, policymakers, NGO organizers, community health workers, and other people who articulate human difference through their use of MSM in scientific "big data," global health policy, and public health services like PrEP (HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis).