About

Ugo Edu is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Medical Anthropology at UCLA, where she also leads the Black ASH Lab. Her scholarship operates at the intersection of medical anthropology, public health, black feminism, and science, technology, and society studies (STS). Her research focuses on reproductive and sexual health, gender, race, aesthetics, body knowledge, and body modifications. She has developed a book project titled "The 'Family Planned': Racial Aesthetics, Sterilization, and Reproductive Fugitivity in Brazil," which examines the influence of race, aesthetics, and sexuality on reproductive and sterilization practices among women in Brazil. Additionally, she is working on a bilingual play, "Em Busca da Ligadura / Securing Ties," scheduled for publication in September 2024, which draws on her book project to foster public engagement and incorporate arts into her scholarship.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Art
• Aesthetics
• Epistemology
• Gender studies
• Literature
• Philosophy
• Law

Selected publications

• Transforming medical anthropology: Community, praxis, and the Black Feminist Health Science Studies Collaboratory

  Medical Anthropology Quarterly · 2024-12-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Despite the transformative contributions of Black feminist thought, medical anthropology often fails to recognize or center the works of Black feminist thinkers. We argue that Black feminist theory is critical for a study and praxis of new approaches to healing, health, medicine, illness, disability, and care. We can't continue to simply recognize that current systems are failing us; Black feminist theory moves us past recognition toward transformative liberation. This special issue emerges from works and conversations leading up to, during, and after the first Black Feminist Health Science Studies Collaboratory, held virtually in May 2021. Through the Collaboratory, we propose a new form of coming together around the sharing of knowledge and practice based in Black feminist thought and Black feminist healing arts. The collection of works that follow demonstrates and provides practical means toward a more liberatory practice of medical anthropology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Anthropological knowledge under redaction: Meditations on race, health, and aesthetics

  Medical Anthropology Quarterly · 2023 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Aesthetics

  Emerging from experimentations with form during our 2021 inaugural BFHSS Collaboratory, this article dabbles in redaction while examining logics of race and aesthetics embedded in how health is defined, measured, and depicted. I also examine logics structuring who is legible as a producer of knowledge, whose body is one from which knowledge is extracted, and who can be given access to population groups for study. Form in this article offers a reflection on the appropriateness of Blackness and pushes for a reconsideration of the relationship between form and function, appropriate claim-making, article writing, and engagement with scholarship.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Race, Racism, And Reproductive Justice

  2023-09-20 · 1 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Aesthetics Politics: Negotiations of Black Reproduction in Brazil

  Medical Anthropology · 2019-11-17 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This article explores the role of aesthetics in the construction and perception of what constitutes healthy reproduction and reproductive practices. I draw on women's reproductive experiences and navigations within a racialized gendered hierarchy. Processes and procedures related to the governance and measurements of reproduction and reproductive health shape these navigations. Focusing on Black women's experiences, I analyze the ways in which values, sensibilities, and affect connected to particular appearances and arrangements influence reproductive decision-making, reproductive health, and family constructions - what I refer to as aesthetics politics.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• When Doctors Don't Tie: Hierarchical Medicalization, Reproduction, and Sterilization in Brazil

  Medical Anthropology Quarterly · 2018-08-22 · 26 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among black women, medical personnel, and activists in Brazil, this article highlights the implications of hierarchical medicalization. I show that the prioritization of particular forms of medicalized contraception for women located differentially in society enables different relations, political positions, and mobility. Denial of a tubal ligation in favor of modern reversible contraceptives, in a context of inequitable distribution, can perpetuate social stratification. This work contributes to literature exploring the complexity of medicalization and its relationship with society via reproduction.

  PublisherDOI

• Collaborations: Envisioning an Engaged Multimodal Future for Anthropology

  2017-01-01 · 2 citations

  article
  Publisher

• Special Focus: Fields, Furrows, and Landmarks in the History of Anthropology

  History of Anthropology Newsletter · 2017-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Transcript: Collaborations: Envisioning an Engaged Multimodal Future for Anthropology

  History of Anthropology Newsletter · 2017-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Sandra Harding, Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-226-24136-4

  Hypatia Reviews Online · 2016-01-01

  articleOpen access1st author

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Keeping an Eye on Power in Maintaining Racial Oppression and Race-Based Violence

  The American Journal of Bioethics · 2016-03-16 · 20 citations

  letterSenior author

  It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticize them in such a mann...

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Ruth Goldstein

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  3 shared

• Patricia Alvarez Astacio

  Brandeis University

  3 shared

• Margaret Bruchac

  1 shared

• Nélia Dias

  Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa

  1 shared

• Matt Watson

  University of Queensland

  1 shared

• Jonathan Marks

  University of North Carolina at Charlotte

  1 shared

• John Tresch

  1 shared

• Edna Suárez‐Díaz

  Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

  1 shared