Natali Valdez

I specialize in applying critical ethnographic methods to understand complex problems in medicine, science, and technology. My research focuses on issues of racism, power, and equity in healthcare.

For over a decade, I have researched the design and implementation of evidence based medicine and its sociopolitical impacts on vulnerable communities. My book, Weighing the Future, was awarded the 2023 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, which recognizes books that make “courageous and significant contributions in gender and health.” It was a finalist for the Ludwik Fleck Prize in science and technology studies. It also received an honorable mention for the Adele E. Clarke book award by the Council on Anthropology and Reproduction.

I have extensive experience working on reproductive healthcare, epigenetics, chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity, and the use of Big Data in shaping health policy. My work aims to improve the equitable integration and application of emerging medicine, science, and technology. Across my research projects, I focus on building sustainable and reciprocal research relations. I have worked with research teams in the United Kingdom, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, and Australia.

Teaching and mentoring are very important aspects of my work. As a child of Mexican immigrants, my passion is to make higher education accessible, inspiring, and a tool for social change. I am committed to public facing work and have collaborated with a group of scholars through the Nutrire CoLab. You can find our podcast here.

B.A., University of Florida, Gainesville
M.A., Ph.D., University of California at Irvine, 2016

Medical Anthropology; Gender; Reproductive Healthcare and Politics; Science and Technology Studies; Health Disparities; Generational Trauma; Gene-Environment Sciences

Perez-Brummer, Amaya, Natali Valdez, and Ayden Scheim, 2024. “The Anti-Gender Threat: An ethical, democratic, and scientific imperative for NIH research/ers” Social Science and Medicine, 1(1): 351-58.

Valdez, Natali and Marine Lappé, 2024. “Gender, Racism, and DOHaD” in The Cambridge Handbook of DOHaD and Society edited by Michelle Pentecost, Jaya Keaney, Tessa Moll, and Michael Penkler. Cambridge University Press.

Valdez, Natali, 2023. “Studying Up from the Margins in a white-supremacist-cis-hetero-patriarchal-capitalist culture” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 37(3): 190-203.

Valdez, Natali, Megan Carney, Emily Yates-Doerr, Abril Saldana-Tejeda, Jessica Hardon, Hanna Garth, Alyshia Galvez, and Maggie Dickinson, 2022. “Duoethnography as Transformative Praxis: Conversations about Nourishment and Coercion in the COVID-era Academy.” Feminist Anthropology, 3(1): 92-105.

Valdez, Natali, 2022. “The Politics of Postgenomic Reproduction: Exploring Pregnant Narratives from Within a Clinical Trial” Science, Technology, and Human Values, 47(6): 1205-1230.

Valdez, Natali, 2019.  “Improvising Race: Clinical Trials and Racial Classifications” Medical Anthropology, 38(8): 635-650.

Valdez, Natali, 2018. “The Redistribution of Reproductive Responsibility: On the Epigenetics of “Environment” in Prenatal Interventions.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 32(3): 425-442.

• Anthropology of Reproduction
• Medical Anthropology
• Anthropology of Science and Technology Studies
• Race, Sex, and Science
• Comparative Cultures
• Anthropological Theory
• Feminist Ethnographies
• Bodies, Trauma, and Healing