William J. Robertson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Memphis. His research focuses on LGBTQ+ health equity in clinical and community settings. His upcoming project examines the impacts of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation on the wellbeing of queer and trans Memphians through the lens of camp humor and drag performance as forms of political resistance and community-based care. He has also conducted projects examining anal cancer prevention among LGBTQ+ people, sexual health education among people in re-entry or diversion from incarceration, and the educational experiences of queer medical students. In collaboration with Dr. Jill Fleuriet of the University of Texas at San Antonio, in the summer of 2025 he will begin running an applied/engaged anthropology field school with local arts organizations in Memphis and San Antonio.
Dr. Jill Fleuriet is Professor of Anthropology and Vice Provost for Honors Education at The University of Texas at San Antonio. Her areas of expertise are health, care, inequality, gender, reproduction, and the arts in south Texas, the US-Mexico borderlands, and higher education. Her work revolves around interventions into systems of meaning that preclude equity in wellbeing, health, and health care. Her most recent applied project was a collaboration with Drs. Sallie Han, Rebecca Galemba, and Nikky Greer about experiences of academic anthropologists who are primary caregivers and an analysis of higher education and our discipline’s structural and cultural impediments and affordances to their wellbeing. Her new projects focus on 1) belonging and mattering experiences among Honors students at a public minority serving institution and 2) US-Mexico borderlands leaders’ work and national public and political rhetoric during the second Trump presidency. She has conducted pro bono program evaluations with local arts organizations, including the San Antonio field school partner, San Pedro Playhouse. Fleuriet co-designed a binational field school in applied medical anthropology and created the UTSA Honors College experiential learning curriculum focusing on the reflexive application of academic knowledge. She serves as the President of The University of Texas System Academy of Distinguished Teachers, which advocates for excellence in teaching across the state.
Whitney L. Duncan (she/her/ella) is a Colorado-based anthropologist, author, and activist whose creative and academic work centers on immigration and global mental health. Duncan’s first book, Transforming Therapy: Mental Health Practice and Cultural Change in Mexico, was published in 2018 (Vanderbilt University Press), and her co-edited volume (with Dr. Kristin Yarris), Accompaniment with Im/migrant Communities: Engaged Ethnography, was published in 2024 (U. Arizona Press). Duncan is a co-founder and steering committee member of the Anthropologist Action Network for Immigrants and Refugees and works actively with Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and American Friends Service Committee’s Not1More Deportation immigrant advocacy group. She is Professor of Anthropology and Associate Director of Hispanic-Serving Initiatives at the University of Northern Colorado and Affiliated Faculty at Colorado School of Public Health.
