https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/home daily 1.0 2025-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609724910890-2IF3KYWQJWHYW5CEX60O/C49E8763-4D89-4EC8-9449-C9DF0B261405.JPG Home - Emma Louise Backe, PhD Emma received her PhD in Anthropology from George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, DC. Her research deals with the politics of care for survivors of gender-based violence in South Africa and the United States. Emma also holds an MA and MPhil in Medical Anthropology and a Certificate in Global Gender Policy from George Washington University. She’s also served as a rape crisis advocate and community educator with the DC Rape Crisis Center, a policy advocate with Collective Action for Safe Spaces, and a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji. In addition to her academic studies, Emma is a consultant in international development, with experience in gender, education, violence, and sexual and reproductive health. She has previously worked with Peace Corps, The Global Women’s Institute, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), the Gender, Health and Justice Research Unit out of the University of Cape Town, Making Cents Collective Action to Reduce Violence Against Women and Girls (CARE GBV), and the USAID Youth in Development Policy. She dedicates her ethnographic research training to addressing health inequity, improving systems of care, particularly for survivors of violence, and promoting culturally sensitive approaches to development and capacity building. Emma currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa and is affiliated at the University of Cape Town (UCT). https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/about daily 0.75 2025-08-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/e4efe054-c731-4f80-a089-0769007f0b94/Screenshot+2025-08-23+at+12.07.58%E2%80%AFPM.png About - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609774287183-ME97KUJ43XKP8ZG24C7R/141008-fallon-horror-tease_tnsyix.jpeg About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609773733808-H8OF07MH25RAJQUVIP3K/Screen+Shot+2020-09-10+at+8.47.21+PM.png About https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609773975989-0YJ2ZK701NPHCELENG7Y/5a205b763dbef4f1018b93c5.jpeg About https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/research-publications daily 0.75 2025-08-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609731771784-ZLNNKKE74HYCDY0FLE3K/IMG_4739+%281%29.jpg Research & Publications - “Caring Through Crisis”: The Politics and Therapeutics of Survival and Recovery in South Africa’s GBV “Emergency” In 2018, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declared gender-based violence an “emergency” in the country. While labeling GBV a crisis might lend urgency to the plight of survivors and serve to mobilize resources on their behalf, my project asks what is left out of an emergency care framework, what happens to survivors beyond the limited purview of treatment allocated by a short-term, crisis intervention model. I ask how this model of crisis became instantiated internationally, through global donors like USAID’s PEPFAR, and how it informs international development objectives and enumerations around violence. In so doing, I interrogate how emergency indicators impact the kinds of “empowerment” and “care” survivors can access, by working within a local Cape Town NGO to see how their staff and survivors navigate the process of recovery and restoration. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609731519026-L9M9LHGSKFYMSRLY4TCQ/EereyijWsAAYzXf.png Research & Publications - South African Syndemics I was part of a research team headed by Dr. Emily Mendenhall of Georgetown University investigating the role of syndemics—specifically non-communicable diseases, including breast cancer, and mental illeness, in relation to chronic illnesses like HIV—in South Africa. This research is being conducted in collaboration between Georgetown University and the University of Witwatersrand with funding from the NIH. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/4ca1b2aa-ffdc-4a0f-a488-a9c35190f98e/maq.12652.fp.png Research & Publications - Make it stand out Fletcher, E.H., Backe, E.L, et al. 2022. “Policy Statement: Mental Well-being among Anthropologists at Universities: A Call for System Transformation.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 36(1). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/6bb0a7e7-a1ae-459d-8dda-a9297277a962/Screenshot+2025-08-23+at+12.15.33%E2%80%AFPM.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/d37c7b16-86a6-47c0-8a9a-81d029e83520/Screenshot+2024-06-03+at+11.32.34%E2%80%AFAM.png https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609730792984-DXPTTPH809SNEQR5G079/socialmediacover.jpg Research & Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609729654687-I2BQX64QLWHJXBSI58EA/01-GettyImages-901632020-1076x588.jpg Research & Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609770479452-X2T7O50X59HYYXILRG7I/292430_3579474888389_797921785_n.jpg Research & Publications https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609770642008-I3538STM59I7EPS0CLPP/IMG_0584.jpg Research & Publications https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/contact daily 0.75 2025-11-14 https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/gender-development daily 0.75 2025-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/575dc6af-0e2c-4651-9f77-d81258a1c6d8/WhatsApp+Image+2025-11-13+at+15.29.27.jpeg Gender & Development - Make it stand out Training on Intimate Partner Violence, Trauma and Survivor-Centered Care for Counselors in Cape Town, 2023 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609727481389-AD2KTCY0F6AW790UFQ1H/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+9.27.05+PM.png Gender & Development https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609728835548-I9ODGUS5SZIUWXOBAB26/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+9.53.21+PM.png Gender & Development https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609727555517-ZS41J777YW4BEWAA0N3W/Screen+Shot+2021-01-03+at+9.32.19+PM.png Gender & Development https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1609771587360-E6Q5AVCQ5CIRW4TUPDAR/10313786_10202061934452754_7406615187464299110_n.jpg Gender & Development - Peace Corps Fiji: Community Health Empowerment From 2013-2014, I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji’s community health sector, as part of an MOU with Fiji’s Ministry of Health. Based in Korovou, Tailevu’s sub-divisional hospital and health center, I conducted a needs assessment on the biggest unaddressed health needs in the area. Fiji suffers from high rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cervical cancer, diabetes, and hypertension, but there is also distrust between local Fijians and the governmental health care system. The needs assessment also revealed high rates of unplanned teenage pregnancies, rising rates of STDs (including HIV), and gaps in addressing maternal and child health (MCH) and family planning needs. I assisted community health partners to conduct outreach workshops in local communities to raise awareness around HIV and AIDS, improve maternal and child nutrition, promote WASH, and provide sexual and reproductive health information in primary and secondary schools. I also worked to improve and facilitate more sensitive intake protocols for survivors of intimate partner violence, improving primary screening capacity among local health staff. During the dengue outbreak of 2014, I also assisted local health inspectors to raise awareness around mosquito breeding grounds, the epidemiology of dengue, and promote better relationships between local communities and government health staff. https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/teaching daily 0.75 2025-11-13 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/d2d1299d-a94c-46a0-b13a-96e26bcfe4f6/WhatsApp+Image+2025-11-13+at+15.31.28+%281%29.jpeg Teaching - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/cef74b3b-1007-49f4-b27b-c1c328ca8bae/Screen+Shot+2023-02-23+at+1.55.17+PM.png Teaching - ANTH 3708: Anthropology of Africa—Medical Colonialism, Global Health and International Development This course will focus on the African continent as a crucial site of intervention, and production of medical knowledge, a “living laboratory” in and through which colonial powers sought to expand their understanding of illness and the body, using medical intervention as a crucial site of control of African populations. Throughout this class, we will track the development of health and humanitarian assemblages in across Africa, paying special attention to which kinds of diseases, ailments and issues of population health are treated as political and scientific problems; the political-economy of aid and humanitarian care in certain “crisis” settings; and how the creation of Africa as a space of and for global health can help us to better understand the unequal distribution of health care resources and infrastructures across the continent. In so doing, we’ll ask what counts as global health; where does global health get practiced; what kinds of knowledge and expertise get leveraged in global health, development and humanitarian aid; and who gets to practice global health and “aid” in Africa. We’ll also explore the dimensions of international development and humanitarian aid that often get overlooked, to the detriment of “invisible” or underlying ailments, as well as the political struggles and forms of mobilization that occur in relation to diseases like HIV and AIDS, infertility, Ebola and COVID-19. Our readings with draw upon medical anthropology, public health, political science, and international affairs, with special attention to the ethnographic particularities and expertise scholars throughout the continent have to offer. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1610041587482-515ZI522EGIGMAA5BAMZ/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+12.45.53+PM.png Teaching - ANTH 3501: Anthropology of Development We will explore the historical “development of development” as an ideological and cultural construct and its powerful role in recalibrating the aspirations and expectations of social groups in a highly unequal world. The second part of the course will shift towards a focus on how development assistance is actually practiced "on the ground" as a form of social interaction and how it is reacted to by different actors as a form of social experience. The last section of the course will take up several key and recent cutting edge issues and trends in contemporary development practice, including: the relationship between women in development (WID) and gender and development (GAD) in structuring how gender and “women’s empowerment” has been adopted into developmental practice; the role of global health and infectious diseases in structuring how aid is delivered and what kinds of suffering qualify for development assistance; human-rights based and indigenous development; and new configurations of concepts like capacity-building and sustainability. This course examines development as a major social process that profoundly shapes global affairs and local lives in the modern world; how it has emerged and functions as a dominant ideology; and why and how it persists and continues grow in scope and influence. We will be reviewing the role anthropology has played in shaping modern practices of development, while interrogating the gaps between what development says that it does, and how development is actually practiced. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1610041068604-ONBLC9RLSNCGLO7FJI9C/Screen+Shot+2021-01-07+at+12.37.04+PM.png Teaching - ANTH 3691: Speculative Anthropologies-Ethnography, Storytelling & Worldbuilding Anthropology has historically been grounded in ideas of the encounter--how we hail the “Other,” how we construct theories of world-building via interactions with otherwise ways of being, how we position the scholar vis-a-vis particular fields of study. This course asks how the stories we engage with, the worldviews that we embody or embark upon, and the kinds of narratives we create as scholars with, by and through our subjects of research propose alternative ways of thinking about history and building a theory of both the past and the present. A speculative anthropology is therefore an engagement with theories and practices that undergird the discipline, while provoking students to reimagine how we study, construct, and write about difference. This class puts ethnographic texts in conversation with critical works of speculative fiction--including Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild,” Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, Donna Haraway’s chthulucene, and Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer--to consider the role of language in re-writing colonial encounters, non-human kinship entanglements, empathizing with medical conditions that are unseen and immeasurable, and technological captivity. This speculative practice also encompasses alternative approaches to analytic and creative writing, with assignments throughout the semester that terraform intellectual imagination and reinscribe how one writes an ethnography. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/1610043422450-1A88032M3XYKG7H8R44O/IMG_8501+%281%29.jpg Teaching https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/fellowships daily 0.75 2024-06-03 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/fd5e0a18-2f7c-49c1-9892-2067b5513513/WhatsApp+Image+2024-06-03+at+12.07.02.jpeg https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec321c2af33de48734cc929/1618497259178-6XJGK9GR6YAVBQL5L519/20140301_Trade-151_012-2.jpg Fellowships & Academic Service https://www.emmalouisebacke.org/new-page daily 0.75 2025-11-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ff2730b0400f408900ae469/aaea0a9d-a461-4d2d-997e-f4cb40a47c6c/Screenshot+2025-11-14+at+4.56.35%E2%80%AFPM.png