Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies; Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies
she/her
About
Abigail Dumes is a medical and cultural anthropologist who has conducted ethnographic research in the United States, France, and Cameroon. Dumes received her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Yale University, and her first book, Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, and Evidence-Based Medicine, was published by Duke University Press in September 2020. Her ongoing research explores the relationship among gender, contested illness, infectious disease, and environmental risk in the United States and engages with scholarship in medical anthropology, feminist science studies, and environmental studies. She is currently conducting research on Long COVID.
National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study report, "A Long COVID Definition: A Chronic, Systemic Disease State with Profound Consequences" (2024)
"Patients as Knowledge Partners in the Context of Complex Chronic Conditions" (2024; Open access in Medical Humanities)
New York Times Guest Essay: "Long Covid Holds a Mirror Up to Medicine"(March 17, 2022)
Infectious Historians Podcast Interview: "Lyme Disease and Long Term Symptoms"(May 16, 2021)
New Books Network Interview (December 8, 2020)
Introduction to Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, and Evidence-Based Medicine (Duke University Press)
"Putting Ethnographic Flesh on New Materialist Bones: Lyme Disease and the Sex/Gender Binary" (Open access in Feminist Anthropology)
"Lyme Disease and the Epistemic Tensions of 'Medically Unexplained Illnesses'" (Open access in Medical Anthropology)
1st Friday Focus On The Environment: Keeping Drinking Water In Michigan's Public Schools Lead-Free (Interview on WEMU 89.1)
