Elizabeth Farfán-Santos, Ph.D., is a medical anthropologist and adjunct professor at the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine. She leads sessions on medical anthropology, cultural humility, and cross-cultural care for the “Physicians, Patients and Populations” course in the Department of Health Systems and Population Health Sciences.

An accomplished researcher and scholar, Dr. Farfán-Santos is the author of two books, Black Bodies, Black Rights: The Politics of Quilombolismo in Contemporary Brazil and Undocumented Motherhood: Conversations on Love, Trauma, and Border Crossing, published by the University of Texas Press. Her research and prose have appeared in prestigious journals including Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, Latino Studies, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Practicing Anthropology, and Intima:A Journal of Narrative Medicine. Dr. Farfán-Santos has also collaborated with public health leaders in the Houston public health system and directed sessions on cultural humility for researchers at the UT Neurosciences-Neurocognitive Disorders Center in Houston.

Dr. Farfán-Santos has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and international studies from Trinity University. She earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in medical anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, before completing postdoctoral work in the Humanities Research Center at Rice University and the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Houston, then moving on to earn early tenure in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies at UH where she worked for seven years prior to joining the College of Medicine.