About

Seth M. Holmes is a Chancellor's Professor at UC Berkeley, serving from 2022 to 2025, in the Department of Society and Environment within the College of Natural Resources, and also in Medical Anthropology. He is an affiliated faculty member in the School of Public Health. Holmes's research investigates social hierarchies, health, healthcare, and the naturalization and normalization of difference and inequality, particularly in the context of transnational US-Mexico im/migration. His work has led to the publication of the book 'Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States,' and he has contributed to various media outlets and radio programs discussing his research. Holmes explores the production of the clinical habitus, subjectivity, and gaze, focusing on how biomedical trainees learn to perceive and respond to social differences and inequalities. He leads a European Research Council project called FOODCIRCUITS, which examines hidden connections between migrants and society, and is working on a book about the social, symbolic, and political processes influencing second-generation members of migrant farmworker families. Holmes is also involved in initiatives aimed at reimagining healthcare and racialized policing systems in the U.S., including co-leading 'Cases in Global Social Medicine' in The Lancet.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Medicine
• Law
• Public relations
• Anthropology
• Geography
• Gender studies
• Economic growth
• Social psychology
• Economics
• Socioeconomics
• Psychiatry
• Psychology
• Media studies
• Nursing
• Pedagogy
• Gerontology
• Medical education
• Ethnology
• Virology

Selected publications

• Comparing MD-PhD trainee experiences by disciplinary background

  JCI Insight · 2026-04-07

  articleOpen access

  MD-PhD trainees increasingly pursue PhDs in social sciences, humanities, and public health (SSHPH). We characterized SSHPH trainee experiences and compared them with those of peers in traditional biomedical disciplines. From March to July 2023, a nationwide survey was sent to US MD-PhD programs that accept SSHPH trainees. Both SSHPH and non-SSHPH trainees participated in a survey focused on belonging, challenges and barriers, funding, and leadership recommendations. Quantitative data were analyzed using Fisher's exact tests, Student's t tests, and Wilcoxon's rank-sum tests. Qualitative comments were analyzed using a hybrid deductive-inductive approach. 234 MD-PhD trainees across the US participated, with 111 (47.4%) in SSHPH and 123 (52.6%) in non-SSHPH disciplines. Overall, there were many similarities between trainees across disciplinary groups, but small and consistent differences were noted among SSHPH trainees, including decreased belonging, difficulty identifying role models, and increased work requirements during graduate school. Respondents had 5 recommendations for MD-PhD leaders and 3 recommendations for the NIH, such as integrating SSHPH scholars into speaker series and incentivizing funding parity. Limitations include high percentages of missing responses. This exploratory study provides insights into SSHPH MD-PhD trainee experiences, highlighting similarities and unique needs that can be addressed within and across MD-PhD programs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Grounding global health in care: connecting decoloniality and migration through racialization

  Global Public Health · 2025-03-24 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Recent academic and activist critiques raise important points about the ways in which coloniality, migration and racialization are often overlooked in global health research and practice. In particular, these critiques highlight how such structural forces perpetuate inequalities and exclusions, as well as processes of epistemic violence in global health. While agreeing with these critical interventions, this paper argues for a focus on care and the importance that concrete acts and systems of care in postcolonial, migratory and racialized contexts have on the suffering and vulnerability of individuals and communities. Drawing on case studies from multiple different geographic and social contexts, we argue that the perspective of racialization can highlight how multi-layered inequalities in global healthcare are shaped by the intertwined processes of coloniality and migration; thereby explaining the contextual, structural vulnerability of specific groups of people to certain health conditions and their exclusion from adequate healthcare resources. We argue that social scientists and critical global health scholars and practitioners can play a central role in bringing the three strands of research - coloniality, migration and racialization - into conversation to explore their potential for jointly advancing the care and well-being of individuals and communities in different geographical and social contexts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Correction: Clinical Ethnographies of the Politics and Poetics of the US Healthcare Crisis

  Culture Medicine and Psychiatry · 2025-05-19

  erratumOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Translational social medicine for global health: introducing Cases in Global Social Medicine

  The Lancet · 2025-11-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Organizing for racial justice in medicine and medical education: An ethnographic study of medical trainee experiences

  Social Science & Medicine · 2025-07-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article investigates the experiences of medical trainee participants in movements for racial justice in medicine and the implications of these experiences in the context of growing attacks on programs and practices for equity in medical education. This study involved ethnographic participant observation - especially what some refer to as observant participation - and ethnographic interviews with a majority of the individuals organizing two movements of medical trainees confronting medical, institutional and structural racism. Interviews and ethnography focused on medical trainee experiences in these two movements as they took shape in the San Francisco Bay Area, though the research also included participants, interviews and questions to give national context. Data were analyzed via grounded theory with ethnographic and interview data coded first and then organized into categories by the authors. White Coats for Black Lives began in 2014 in response to multiple police killings to confront police and carceral violence against Black people and other people of color, as well as to demand changes in medical education itself. Several years later, medical trainees organized against the use of "race-correction factors" in clinical labs, considering the problematic evidence supporting such correction factors and the health and health care disparities they cause. In light of the data, we argue that medical trainees who experienced discrimination and inequality affecting themselves, their families or their communities bring critical expertise, insights and analyses to medical education related to social justice and health equity. The trainees involved in these movements employed these forms of expertise to push against the hidden and explicit curricula in medical education as well as to work for health and health care equity more broadly. This article considers the impressive successes and deep challenges faced by trainees in each of these movements and concludes with implications for medical education, medicine and the medical social sciences.

  PublisherDOI

• Incorporating Structural Competency into Clinical Ethics: Piloting New Bioethics Education

  The Journal of Clinical Ethics · 2025-05-21 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  AbstractThe Liaison Committee on Medical Education recently adopted structural competency, an approach to understanding and responding to social factors in health and healthcare, as a required part of medical training. We have found that structural competency education shows promise for graduate and continuing bioethics education as well. In postgraduate bioethics education, structural competency focuses on the practical skills of identifying where social forces impact specific patients and how clinicians can respond. This can support clinical ethicists in their attempts to help clinicians identify, understand, and respond to ethical dilemmas caused by social forces, for example, the ways in which resource availability may influence a patient's opportunities and health options, and the impact of the built environment on the health hazards people encounter. We describe how one clinical ethics program integrated structural competency into bioethics education for medical residents and other clinicians. This structural competency education pilot received extremely positive feedback from participating clinicians. Ninety-seven percent of those who responded to evaluation surveys identified structural competency as "valuable" or "very valuable" to their clinical practice. When providing feedback on this education, clinicians described immediately incorporating structural competency strategies in ethically difficult patient care situations. We present a case study shared and developed by clinicians using these strategies to improve patient care. This practical use of structural competency education suggests that there may be benefits to integrating this approach into bioethics education. We suggest next steps for bioethics educators to further examine these educational strategies following our promising pilot.

  PublisherDOI

• Clinical Ethnographies of the Politics and Poetics of the US Healthcare Crisis

  Culture Medicine and Psychiatry · 2025-02-22 · 2 citations

  editorialOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Migration et exploitation des travailleur·se·s agricoles aujourd’hui. De l’importance de relier les enjeux de racialisation, migrations et santé

  Anthropologie et santé · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  La loi du 26 janvier 2024 pour contrôler l’immigration, améliorer l’intégration, communément appelée « loi asile et immigration », a été adoptée le 19 décembre 2023 après avoir donné lieu à des débats houleux et à de nombreuses manifestations dans tout l’hexagone. En tant que citoyen américain, médecin et anthropologue, et récemment en tant que professeur invité à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) à Paris, j’ai suivi avec intérêt ces mobilisations. L’immigration et l’acc...

  PublisherDOI

• Structural competency in global perspective

  Global Public Health · 2024-03-11 · 7 citations

  editorialOpen access

  This special issue aims to help fill two critical gaps in the growing literature as well as in practice. First, to bring together scholars and practitioners from around the world who develop, practice, review, and question structural competency with the aim of promoting a dialogue with related approaches, such as Latin American Social Medicine, Collective Health, and others, which have been key in diverse geographical and social settings. Second, to contribute to expanding structural competency beyond clinical medicine to include other health-related areas such as social work, global health, public health practice, epidemiological research, health policy, community organisation and beyond. This conceptual expansion is currently taking place in structural competency, and we hope that this volume will help to raise awareness and reinforce what is already happening. In sum, this collection of articles puts structural competency more rigorously and actively in conversation with different geographic, political, social, and professional contexts worldwide. We hope this conversation sparks further development in scholarly, political and community movements for social and health justice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America by Thurka Sangaramoorthy (review)

  Bulletin of the history of medicine · 2024-06-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Émilien Schultz

  120 shared

• Alexandra Rouquette

  Bicêtre Hospital

  104 shared

• Julien Mancini

  Inserm

  72 shared

• Rajae Touzani

  Economic & Social Sciences, Health Systems & Medical Informatics

  68 shared

• Dominique Rey

  Inserm

  52 shared

• Anne‐Déborah Bouhnik

  Inserm

  52 shared

• Françis Guillemin

  32 shared

• Stéphanie Vandentorren

  Université de Bordeaux

  20 shared

Education

• M.D., School of Medicine

  University of California San Francisco

• Ph.D. , Medical Anthropology

  University of California San Francisco

• B.S., Ecology and Spanish

  University of Washington

Awards & honors

• Rudolf Virchow Award from the Society for Medical Anthropolo…
• New Millennium Book Award from the Society for Medical Anthr…
• Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Award
• James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology…
• Margaret Mead Award