Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry - Introducing Editor-in-Chief Neely Myers and Associate Editor Julia Brown
Under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Lester (this opens in a new tab) and her editorial assistant Lauren Cubellis, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry has flourished. We are deeply grateful to them both for the diligence, energy, and commitment to academic excellence they brought to the journal during their tenure; they have been instrumental to the journal's continued success and achievements in the field. We wish them both every success going forward, and celebrate with Rebecca as she takes on new responsibilities as Chair of Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. We look forward to seeing their careers continue to flourish.
We are pleased to announce that Rebecca's successors are Neely Myers (this opens in a new tab) as Editor-in-Chief and Julia Brown (this opens in a new tab) as Associate Editor. Neely has already been involved with the journal for several years as a member of the editorial board and brings both a familiarity with the journal's core values and a new vision for how to take the journal forward with Julia's help. Please read the bios they have provided below and join us in welcoming them both. In the weeks and months to come, keep an eye out for additional introductory materials from our new editors.
Neely Laurenzo Myers, PhD (Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago) is a medical and psychological anthropologist specializing in the cross-cultural study of mental health, recovery, and mental health services. Dr. Myers is currently tenured at Southern Methodist University in the Department of Anthropology where she runs the Mental Health Equity Lab (this opens in a new tab), and is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UT-Southwestern. Dr. Myers has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Her first book on “recovery-oriented” mental health care reforms in the United States, Recovery's Edge (this opens in a new tab), received the Norman and Rosalea Goldberg Prize for being the best new book in the area of medicine from the press.
Dr. Myers’ current research focuses on mental health care for people experiencing clinical and nonclinical symptoms of psychosis and trauma in the U.S. and northern Tanzania, including youth and adults. She is currently a co-investigator of the National Institute for Mental Health funded study, Advancing the Early Psychosis Intervention Network in Texas with colleagues at UT-Austin where she is investigating the intersections of substance use and early psychosis. She is also the Chair of the Qualitative Workgroup for EPINET-National (this opens in a new tab) and has recently served as the Secretary of the Society for Psychological Anthropology. She is also working on her next book, Breaking Points: Youth in Crisis and Refusals of Care, as well as co-hosting the Culture, Mind and Brain Seminar with UT-Southwestern. In her free time, she enjoys relaxing with her family, walking her dog, and playing the fiddle.
Julia Brown, PhD (Anthropology, Australian National University), is an anthropologist and bioethics scholar of mental health, health disparities and controversial biomedical treatments. Her book, The Clozapine Clinic: Health Agency in High-Risk Conditions (this opens in a new tab) (Routledge, 2022), is an ethnography about experiences of health and social empowerment in the context of psychosis, antipsychotic medication and side-effect monitoring, and multi-morbidity in the United Kingdom and Australia. Dr. Brown investigates both lived experiences of complex conditions and clinical perspectives, taking a particular interest in ethical trade-offs, research processes, temporality frameworks, and community engagement efforts. During her graduate training, she co-founded The Familiar Strange (this opens in a new tab) blog and podcast. Since 2020, she has been a postdoc with the Bioethics program at the University of California, San Francisco, and a postdoctoral affiliate of the Center for Global Mental Health, University of California, San Diego. Brown recently received an NIH K99/R00 Award from the National Human Genome Research Institute to conduct an “embedded ethics” ethnography on the emergence of prenatal gene therapies and the tensions around social inclusion for underrepresented communities. In her free time, she enjoys urban walks, listening to music and podcasts, and spending time with loved ones.