Contributor

Aline Gubrium

Associate professor and medical anthropologist, UMass Amherst

I have extensive experience using innovative and collaborative research methodologies, including narrative, visual, and sensory approaches. I am a trained and experienced facilitator of digital storytelling workshops and use the process in public health research, intervention, and advocacy contexts. As a medical anthropologist, I have worked in diverse communities, nationally and internationally, including conducting discursive narrative and ethnographic research on gender socialization and substance use among southern, rural African American women; collaborating with community-based partners on an NIH-funded Photovoice project with Latino/a youth in Springfield, MA focused on parent-child communication about sexuality; heading up a Ford Foundation-funded digital storytelling, sensory ethnography project and strategic communications project focused on sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice with young parenting Latinas; and leading an NICHD-funded project on using a culture-centered narrative approach for health promotion with nulliparous, pregnant, and/or parenting young Latinas. Currently, I serve as Co-I, as a digital storytelling/narrative expert, on a U01 funded by the NIMHD, which uses a CBPR approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a narratively enhanced intervention in lowering stress and risk of chronic diseases among men of color. My 2013 and 2015 books explain participatory visual and digital methodologies for social research, health promotion and practice, and advocacy.