Publications and News

Articles

2024 “New frontiers for Biosocial Birth Cohort Research: interdisciplinary approaches to exposure, harmonisation and collaboration.” Sahra Gibbon, Elizabeth, F. S. Roberts, Rebecca Hardy, Dominique, P. Béhague, Martha, M. Téllez Rojo, Ana Goncalves-Soares, Rosie Mathers, Michael Penkler, Silvia Fraga, Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Michelle Pentecost, Evie Tabor, Robbin Jeffries-Hein, Martine Lappé, Catherine Borra, Sophia Rossmann, Stephanie Lloyd, Angela Filipe, Susana Silva. Wellcome Open Research, 9: 355. July 5 2024. (PDF)

2024 “Bioethnography.” Roberts EFS, Goodrich JM, Jansen EC, Needham BL, Sánchez BN, Téllez Rojo MM. In: Pentecost M, Keaney J, Moll T, Penkler M, eds. The Handbook of DOHaD and Society: Past, Present, and Future Directions of Biosocial Collaboration. Cambridge University Press; (174-184). (PDF)

2023 “Agua para todos? La intermitencia en el suministro de agua en los hogares en México.” (Water for everyone? Water intermittency in Mexican households.) Figueroa, José Luis, Alejandra Rodríguez-Atristain, Faith Cole, Verónica Mundo-Rosas, Alicia Muñoz-Espinosa, Juan Carlos Figueroa-Morales, Zoe Boudart, Martha María Téllez-Rojo, Sergio Bautista-Arredondo, Brisa Sánchez, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts. Salud Pública de México. 65. (PDF)

2023 “Making Bioethnographic Teams Work: Disciplinary Destabilization, Generative Friction, and the Role of Mediators.” Zoe Boudart and Catherine Borra. Platypus: Blog for the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing (Link)

2023 “Making scarcity “enough”: The hidden household costs of adapting to water scarcity in Mexico City.” Alyssa Huberts, David Palma, Ana Cecilia Bernal Garcia, Faith Cole, Elizabeth F. S. Roberts PLOS WATER, 2(3) (PDF)

2021 ”Causal Enclosures—Over and Over.” Elizabeth F.S. Roberts  Medical Anthropology Quarterly35(4), 547-552 (PDF)

2021 “What Gets Inside: The Adaptability of Colonia Periferico.” Elizabeth F.S. Roberts. Peeps Magazine –  Issue 8, Toxicity and Complicity.  https://peepsmagazine.ca/what-gets-inside (PDF)

2021 David Berrigan, Sonia Arteaga, Uriyoán Colón-Ramos, Lisa G. Rosas, Rafael Monge Rojas, Teresia M. O’Connor, Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Brisa Sanchez, Martha Maria Téllez-Rojo, Susan Vorkoper and the Cross Borders Working Group. “Measurement challenges for childhood obesity research within and between Latin America and the United States.” Obesity Reviews. 021;e13242. (PDF)

2021 “Making Better Numbers through Bioethnographic Collaboration” Elizabeth F.S. Roberts. American Anthropologist (PDF)

Mary Leighton, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, 2020 “Trust/Distrust in Multidisciplinary Collaboration: Some Feminist Reflections.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 6(2), 1-27.  (PDF)

Jansen, Erica C., Hannah Marcovitch, Julia A. Wolfson, Mary Leighton, Karen E. Peterson, Martha Maria Téllez Rojo, Alejandra Cantoral, and Elizabeth FS Roberts. “Exploring dietary patterns in a Mexican adolescent population: A mixed methods approach.” Appetite (2019): 104542. (PDF)

Roberts, Elizabeth F.S. 2019 “Bioethnography and the Birth Cohort: A Method for Making New Kinds of Anthropological Knowledge about Transmission (which is what anthropology has been about all along).” Somatosphere, November 19, (Link)

Leighton, Mary, and Elizabeth F.S. Roberts. 2018. “Bioethnography as a Methodological Approach to Social and Chemical Life in Mexico City.” Anthropology News website, March 27, 2018. (PDF)

Roberts, Elizabeth F. S. and Sanz, Camilo 2017. “Bioethnography: A How-To Guide for the Twentieth Century” in M. Meloni et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society. Springer: London (PDF)

Roberts, Elizabeth F.S. 2017. ‘What Gets Inside: Violent Entanglements and Toxic Boundaries in Mexico City.’ Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 32, Issue 4, pp. 592–619. (PDF)

Roberts, Elizabeth F.S. 2017. ‘Zombie Guts and Border Walls’ Public Books website, October 19. (Link)

Roberts, Elizabeth F. S.  2017. ‘”Exposure.” Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology website, June 28. (Link)

Roberts, Elizabeth F.S. 2015. ‘Food is love: And so, what then?’ BioSocieties 10, 247–252. (PDF)

Roberts, Elizabeth F.S. 2015. ‘Bio-Ethnography: A Collaborative, Methodological Experiment in Mexico City.’ Somatosphere, February 26, 2015 (Link)

Notices, News, and Reports

“Making Bioethnographic Teams Work: Disciplinary Destabilization, Generative Friction, and the Role of Mediators” Platypod, Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing (CASTAC), June 22nd, 2023.

“Resiente el 83% de hogares la escasez de agua” (“83% of households suffer from water scarcity”) Reforma, July 9th, 2023. [PDF]

“How households adapt to water scarcity: New study sheds light on hidden costs of global Issue” covered by both the Institute for Social Research and Michigan News, March 8th, 2023.

“Disability, Toxicity, and the Environment” Platypod, Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing (CASTAC), September 27th, 2022

 Rivera-González, Joyce, and Michelle Hak Hepburn. 2022. “What Resilience Does.” AnthroPod, Fieldsights, February 17. Interviews with anthropologists Roberto Barrios, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts, Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Andrew Wooyoung Kim, and Jason Cons

Anthropology Stars”  Anthropology News, AAA Sections, January 2021

“Anthropologist explores water’s role in Mexico City lives” The University Record, April 22, 2019.

Interview with Liz Roberts, Seminar Ethnographies of Science and Technology, Cuenca – Ecuador, 2018

En la soda confiamos. Un problema de salud pública en México.” EFA Análisis website.  November 6, 2018. By Elizabeth F.S. Roberts

Cultures of Energy podcast, featuring Elizabeth Roberts in conversation with Dominic Boyer and Cymene Howe from the Center for Energy and the Environment Research in the Humanities, Rice University. April 26, 2018. (Link)

Sacco, Katherine and Agro, HilaryEntanglement’s Limits: An Interview with Elizabeth F. S. Roberts.” Dialogues, Cultural Anthropology website, March 12, 2018.

Bioetnografía: un experimento con métodos antropológicos en la Ciudad de México #AnthroDay” Colegio de Etnólogos y Antropólogos Sociales, A.C. (CEAS) website. By David Palma Vázquez and Elizabeth F.S. Roberts. February 2018

The Roberts Lab: Innovation and Collaboration.” Anthropology Newsletter. By Elizabeth Noll & Helen Lund. February 2018

Presentations

“Making Better Numbers: Ten Years of Collaboration Between Ethnography and Epidemiology” TRIADS Speaker Series, (Washington University in St. Louis), February 1, 2024.
Making Better Numbers: Ten Years of Collaboration Between Ethnography and Epidemiology – Office for Research Development and Scholarly Activity (ORDSA) Visiting Scholars Lecture (Oklahoma University School of Community Medicine), January 18, 2024
Applying Lessons From Ten Years of Mixed Methods Research – Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica, May 18, 2023
Are We Asking the Right Questions? – Center for Global Health Equity Webinar (University of Michigan), December 9, 2021.
Sensing Intermittency and Inequality in Mexico City, Webinar for Series – Water Ways: New Social Science, Science Studies and Environmental Approaches to Water on February 14, 2022
Citizen Responses to Low Quality Urban Water: A Political Economy Approach by Alyssa Hubert (Harvard University), Series – Water Ways: New Social Science, Science Studies and Environmental Approaches to Water, April 4, 2022

Thesis and Student Posters

Cole, Faith. 2018 ‘Diagnostic Trajectories: The Entanglement of Resources, Diagnoses, and Bodies in Mexico City’ (Unpublished undergraduate thesis) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. (PDF)

Marcovitch, Hannah. 2017. ‘Discretionary Foods and Relational Eating: A Bioethnography of Nutrition Science and Daily Sustenance in Mexico City.’ (Unpublished undergraduate thesis) University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. (PDF)

Marcovitch, H., Jansen, E. and Roberts, E.F.S. 2017. ‘Discretionary Foods and Relational Eating: A Bioethnography of Nutrition Science and Daily Sustenance in Mexico City Poster Presented at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Conference, Ann Arbor MI

Roberts, E. F.S, Sanz, C., Briscoe, H., and Merritt, K. 2017 Mexican Exposures: Bio-Ethnography with Six Mexican Families Poster Presented at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Conference, Ann Arbor MI (PDF)

Roberts, E.F.S, Toledo, J., and Ibarra, M. 2016 Mexican Exposures: Bio-Ethnography with Six Mexican Families Poster Presented at the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Conference, Ann Arbor MI (PDF)

Related ELEMENT publications

University of Michigan Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Center