Britt Halvorson

An anthropologist of religion, Britt Halvorson examines the cultural history and practice of medical humanitarianism within religious communities, and the ethics and politics of aid relationships between Christian communities in the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa. She has also published field-leading essays about global waste economies, medical risk, medical commerce, healing and African Christianities, and African Christian migration to the U.S. in top-tier journals and influential essay collections. Halvorson’s highly regarded first book, Conversionary Sites: Transforming Medical Aid and Global Christianity from Madagascar to Minnesota was published in 2018. Her second book, Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest, explores how and why the Midwest has played an important role in defining whiteness in the American imagination, and will be published in May. Her next project, a life history of a Malagasy Christian cleric and anti-colonial activist, is well underway. Halvorson received an M.A. and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in anthropology and English literature from Albion College.