I am an NRF-rated Professor and Head of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town and Convenor of Health Humanities and the Arts (M.Phil).

Academic Interests and Current Research Projects

I am passionate about teaching anthropology in South Africa’s higher education landscape, and have dedicated my career to developing innovative course curricula in medical and visual anthropology. I am the convenor of anthropology's new interdisciplinary M.Phil Programme, Health Humanities and the Arts, which comprises a one year degree program that includes the participation of artists, performers, and health and humanities practitioners to address health inequalities and knowledge production in the health sciences across the African continent.

My work is positioned at the intersection of medical, political and visual anthropology. Working in and out of disciplines underpins my pedagogical approach to interdisciplinary problem solving and knowledge production in the context of an evolving health humanities framework in Africa. My interests span a variety of subfields in Anthropology, including political economy, youth and childhood studies, ethnographic film, and medical anthropology.

My current research on covid-19 draws on my substantive HIV/AIDS research, in Southern Africa, with a particular focus on vaccine hesitancy and the politics of vaccine nationalism.

I am a passionate teacher at undergraduate and post-graduate levels and supervise a wide variety of post-graduate research projects.

Select Recent Publications

Levine, S., and L. Manderson (2021). "Proxemics, COVID-19, and the Ethics of Care in South Africa." Cultural Anthropology 36.3 (2021): 391-399.

Manderson, L., Burke, N. J., & Wahlberg, A. (Eds.). (2021). Militarising the Pandemic: Lockdown in South Africa. Viral Loads: Anthropologies of urgency in the time of COVID-19. UCL Press. Pages 47-66.

Levine, S. (2020). Opening the wound: Receptions and readings of Inxeba in South Africa. Journal of African Cinemas, 12(2-3), 177-189.

Manderson, L., & Levine, S. (2020). COVID-19, risk, fear, and fall-out. Medical Anthropology.

Manderson, L., and S. Levine (2020) "Aging, Care, and Isolation in the Time of COVID-19." Anthropology and Aging 41.2: 132.

Swartz, A., S. Levine, A. Rother, F. Langerman.  "Toxic layering through three disciplinary lenses: childhood poisoning and street pesticide use in Cape Town, South Africa." Medical humanities 44.4 (2018): 247-252.

Manderson, L. and S. Levine. 2018.  Southward Focussed: Medical Anthropology in South Africa. World Anthropologies: Special section on Medical Anthropology. American Anthropologist , Vol. 120, No. 3, pp. 566-569.

Levine, Susan (ed.), (2018).  At the Foot of the Volcano: Reflections on Higher Education in South Africa. Best Red (HSRC): Cape Town.

Levine, Susan. (2013). Children of a Bitter Harvest. Best Red/HSRC Press: Cape Town.

Levine, Susan (ed.), (2012). Medicine and the Politics of Knowledge. HSRC Press: Cape Town.