Courses Taught and In Development 

• PSY 224: Culture and Psychology
• PSY 380: Psychology, Culture and the Therapeutic Process
• PSY 480: Aboriginal Mental Health
• PSY 801: Culture and Mental Health
• ANTH 111: One World, Many Peoples
• ANTH 305: The Practice of Ethnography
• ANTH 403: Anthropology of Healing
• ANTH 498: Culture, Mind and Experience
• ANTH 405: Anthropology of Disaster and Dislocation
• ANTH 802: Community-Based Research: Ethnography and Engagement

Student Employment or Research Opportunities

From time to time I require students to assist in data management and analysis.

Selected Publications

Books and Monographs

Waldram, James B. 2020. An Imperative to Cure: Principles and Practice of Q'eqchi' Maya Medicine in Belize. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Waldram, James B. 2012. Hound Pound Narrative: Sexual Offender Habilitation and the Anthropology of Therapeutic Intervention. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Waldram JB. (editor). 2008. Aboriginal healing in Canada:Studies in therapeutic meaning and practice.  Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

Waldram JB, Herring DA, Young TK. 2006. Aboriginal health inCanada: Historical, cultural and epidemiological perspectives. 2^nd Ed. Toronto:University of Toronto  Press.

Waldram JB. 2004.Revenge of the Windigo: The construction of the mind and mental health of North American Aboriginal peoples Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Anthropological Horizons.

Laliberte R, Settee P, Waldram JB, Macdougall B, McBain L, Innes R, Barron, FL. (editors). 2000. Expressions in Canadian Native Studies. Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan Press.

Waldram JB. 1997. The way of the pipe: Aboriginal spirituality and symbolic healing in Canadian prisons. Peterborough: Broadview Press.

Chapters in Books

Victor, Janice, and James B. Waldram (2015). Moral habilitation and the new normal: Sexual offender narratives of posttreatment community integration. In Lois Presser and Sveinung   Sandberg, Eds. Narrative Criminology. Pp. 96-121. New York: New York University (NYU) Press.

Waldram, James B. 2015. Writing bad: Prison ethnography and the problem of “tone.” In The Palgrave handbook of prison ethnography. Deborah Drake, Rod Earle, Jennifer Sloan (eds). Pp. 214-229. London: Palgrave.

Waldram, JB. 2008. Aboriginal Health and Health Care in Canada. Handbook of North American Indians: Contemporary Issues. Pp. 222-230. Washington: Smithsonian Institute.

Waldram JB. 2008. Models and metaphors of healing. In: Aboriginal healing in Canada: Studies in Therapeutic Meaning and Practice. James B. Waldram (ed). Pp. 1-8. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation.

Waldram JB., Innes R, Kaweski M, Redman C. (n.d). Building a nation: Aboriginal healing in urban context. In: Aboriginal healing in Canada: Studies in Therapeutic Meaning and Practice. James B. Waldram (ed). Pp. 205-268. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation. In Press.

Waldram JB. 2008. Culture and Aboriginality in the Study of Mental Health. In: L. Kirmayer and G. Valaskakis (Eds). Pp. 56-79. The Mental Health of Canadian Aboriginal Peoples: Transformations of Identity and Community. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Waldram JB, Downe P. 2006. Ex-patriots in the Ivory Tower: The Experiences of Academic Anthropologists in non-Anthropology Departments. In: Historicizing Canadian Anthropology. J. Harrison and R. Darnell (Eds). Pp. 183-195. Vancouver: UBC Press.

Articles in Refereed Journals

Hatala, Andrew R., and James B. Waldram. (2017) Diagnostic Emplotment in Q’eqchi’ Maya Medicine. Medical Anthropology 36(3):273-286.

Scharbach, Julia, and James B. Waldram. (2016). Asking for a Disaster: Being “At Risk” in the Emergency Evacuation of a Northern Canadian Aboriginal Community. Human Organization 75(1): 59-70.

Hatala, Andrew R., and James B. Waldram (2015). The Role of Sensorial Processes in Q’eqchi’ Maya Healing: A Case Study of Depression and Bereavement. Transcultural Psychiatry 53(1): 60-80.

Hatala, Andrew R., and James B. Waldram (2015). Narrative structures of Maya mental disorders. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry [In Press]

Waldram, James B.  (2015). “I Don’t Know the Words He Uses”: Therapeutic Communication among Q’eqchi Maya Healers and Their Patients. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 29(3):279-297.

Waldram, James B., and Andrew R. Hatala ( 2015). Latent and manifest empiricism in Q’eqchi’ Maya healing: A case study of HIV/AIDS. Social Science and Medicine 126:9-16.

Waldram, James B. (2013). Transformative and restorative processes: Revisiting the efficacy of Indigenous healing. Medical Anthropology 32(3): 191-207.

Waldram, James B. (2012). Healing history? Aboriginal healing, historical trauma, and personal responsibility. Transcultural Psychiatry 51(3): 370-386.

 Waldram, J.B.  2010. Moral agency, cognitive distortion, and narrative strategy in the rehabilitation of sexual offenders. Ethos 38(3): 251-274.

Anthropology of Healing Belize Canada Disaster and Evacuation Ethnographic Methods Indigenous Health Medical and Applied Anthropology

I am an applied anthropologist first and foremost. My research falls within the areas of medical, psychological and psychiatric anthropology, and environmental anthropology. I am primarily interested in issues of culture and health.  I have undertaken fieldwork in more than a dozen Aboriginal communities in Canada, in medical clinics, and in prisons.  My current projects include field research among a group of Q’eqchi (Maya) healers in southern Belize, and an exploration of the psychological and sociocultural implicatons of disasters and community evacuation in northern Canada.

B.A. (Hons) Anthropology, University of Waterloo (1978)

M.A. Anthropology, University of Manitoba, (1980)

PhD Medical Anthropology, University of Connecticut (1983)