Eugene Raikhel is a cultural and medical anthropologist with interests encompassing the anthropology of science, biomedicine, and psychiatry; addiction and its treatment; suggestion and healing; and post-socialist transformations in Eurasia. He is particularly concerned with the circulation of new forms of knowledge and clinical intervention produced by biomedicine, neuroscience, and psychiatry. His work follows therapeutic technologies as they move from "bench to bedside" and from one cultural or institutional setting to another, examining how they intersect with the lives of practitioners and patients. Raikhel's book Governing Habits: Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic examines the political-economic, epidemiological, and clinical changes that have transformed the knowledge and medical management of alcoholism and addiction in Russia over the past twenty years. Two new projects, both based largely in North America, are in an earlier stage of development. The first examines the emerging field of "behavioral epigenetics," with particular focus on research about suicidal risk. The second will examine how contemporary logics, practices, and politics of mental health and illness intersect with class distinctions and aspirations for upward mobility among undergraduates in the United States.

To learn more about Eugene Raikhel’s research and publications, please visit his faculty page.