Dr. Sera L. Young is a Professor of Anthropology and the Morton O. Schapiro Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University. As an applied nutritional anthropologist, she has dedicated her career to understanding how women, especially in low-resource settings, cope to preserve their health and that of their families.
After her BA in Cultural Anthropology (U of Michigan), she pursued an MA in Medical Anthropology (U of Amsterdam), where she studied maternal anemia in Zanzibar, Tanzania. For her PhD in International Nutrition (Cornell) she returned to observations about anemia in Zanzibar: that anemic women craved earth, raw starch and other non-food substances (pica). During her post-doctoral and faculty positions at University of California (UC) Berkeley, UC Davis, and UC San Francisco, she was involved with a number of studies pertaining to HIV, food insecurity, and infant feeding in sub-Saharan Africa.
Professor Young’s current research is focused on quantifying human experiences with problems with water, and unpacking their consequences for nutrition, health, and well-being. To that end, she led a large team in the development of the Water InSecurity Experiences (WISE) Scales, the first cross-country equivalent way of measuring water access and use.
She has co-authored more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, USAID, and FCDO/BMGF; awards include the Margaret Mead Award for her book Craving Earth, the Nevin Scrimshaw Prize, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Education
PhD in Nutritional Anthropology, Cornell University
MA in Medical Anthropology, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Introduction, Intermediate, and Advanced Swahili Courses, Taasisi Institute of Kiswahili and Foreign Languages (Tanzania)
BA in Anthropology, Secondary Level Teaching Certificate University of Michigan
International Baccalaureate, United World College of the Atlantic (Wales)
Appointments
Professor of Anthropology and Global Health, Northwestern University
2024-Present
Affiliations: Institute for Policy Research Faculty Fellow, Global Health Studies, Center for Synthetic Biology, Buffett Institute for Global Studies, Northwestern Center for Water Research, Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics, Northwestern International Institute for Nanotechnology, Program in African Studies, Third Coast Center for AIDS
Senior Associate of the Global Food and Water Security Program, Center for Strategic & International Studies
2023-2025
Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge (England)
2023-2024
Leverhulme Visiting Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
2023-2024
Associate Professor, Northwestern University
2019-2024
Assistant Professor, Northwestern University
2016-2019
Adjunct Curator, The Field Museum of Natural History
2016-Present
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Global Health and Nutrition, Cornell University
2016-2019
Assistant Professor of Global Health and Nutrition, Cornell University
2014-2016
Research Scientist in the Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University
2011-2015
Reproductive Infectious Diseases Fellow in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, University of California San Francisco
2010-2011
Assistant Researcher in the Department of Pediatrics, University of California Davis
2008-2011
Assistant Researcher in the School of Public Health, University of California Berkeley
2008