Listening to the Body: Health, Inequality and Anthropology with Dr Elizabeth Mills

In this episode of Field Notes: The Sussex Anthropology Podcast, Sana Batool speaks with Elizabeth Mills, Associate Professor in Anthropology and International Development at the University of Sussex. Beth reflects on how she first found anthropology in South Africa during a time of HIV activism and political urgency, and how that experience shaped her lifelong commitment to understanding health, gender, precarity and policy.The conversation explores Beth’s research across South Africa, the UK, the US and Yemen, looking at how policies and institutions shape everyday embodied experiences of inequality. She discusses why anthropology and international development belong in conversation with one another, and how methods such as participatory photography, film and body mapping can reveal what words alone often cannot.From HIV activism and state neglect to reproductive justice, queer family-making and the politics of care, this episode offers a powerful reflection on what it means to hold systems accountable while staying close to lived experience. It is also a hopeful conversation about students, teaching, and why anthropology still matters in making sense of urgent social worlds.Contact Dr Elizabeth Mills here: https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p226593-elizabeth-mills