Helena Hansen

Helena Hansen, MD, PhD, is assistant professor of psychiatry and anthropology at New York University.  She is an anthropologist and psychiatrist who studies addiction and pharmaceuticals from the viewpoint of the production of class, race and gender; her fieldwork has ranged from evangelical street ministries in Puerto Rico to the ethnic marketing of addiction pharmaceuticals and prescription opioid abuse as a “white” middle class epidemic.  She publishes in both clinical and social science journals, teaches both medical trainees and anthropology students, and her work has been supported by funders as diverse as NIDA, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Social Science Research Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.