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Associate Professor

Cultural/Applied Anthropology


Karin Friederic is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wake Forest University whose research examines the intersections of human rights, gender, violence, and health in Latin America and Sweden. Her research and teaching interests span medical anthropology, global health, transnational feminism, global inequality, disability studies, and the study of chronic “contested” illnesses.

Her book, The Prism of Human Rights: Seeking Justice amid Gender Violence in Rural Ecuador (Rutgers University Press, 2023), explores how human rights discourses reshape family relations, gender identities, and responses to intimate partner violence on Ecuador’s coast. Drawing on two decades of research and activism, she shows both the possibilities and limits of human rights campaigns in advancing justice, especially in rural contexts.

Friederic’s current projects include: (1) research on queer youth and alternative masculinities in rural Ecuador, and (2) a study of “contested” illnesses such as ME/CFS, health care, and interoception in Sweden, inspired in part by her own experiences with chronic illness. 

Since 2000, she has collaborated with Ecuadorian communities to improve access to health care and to mobilize against gender violence. In 2003, she co-founded the Minga Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing global health through community-led development.

She received her BA in Anthropology from Colorado College and her MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona before joining the faculty at Wake Forest.  In her free time, she loves traveling, mountain biking, and swimming in lakes with her family, and learning and practicing languages for fun.