João Biehl
Brazilian anthropologist
João Guilherme Biehl is a Brazilian medical anthropologist known for his innovative studies of global health, poverty, and suffering. He is currently the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Anthropology, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, and Director of the Brazil LAB at Princeton University.
Biehl's scholarship has earned widespread acclaim, as well as several of the anthropology's most prestigious awards. These include the Margaret Mead Award, Diana Forsythe Prize, and two Rudolf Virchow Awards. Biehl was also a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.
Early life and education
Biehl grew up in the favelas outside of the town of Novo Hamburgo in Southern Brazil after migrating from the colonial interior with his parents and sister at the age of 4. He showed an early interest in education, entering the first grade and completing grade school a year earlier than most other children in Novo Hamburgo. He cites his passion for storytelling as stemming from receiving books for Christmas as a child, a rare commodity for poor families in the favelas.
After completing high school he began studying journalism and theology at two different academic institutions, along with Greek and German, church history, philosophy and systematic theology in Porto Alegre. Biehl received his Bachelor of Arts in Theology from Escola Superior de Teologia da IECLB in 1985, his Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in 1985, his Master's of Arts in Philosophy from Universidade Federal de Santa Maria in 1991, his Masters of Arts in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley in 1994, his Doctor of Philosophy in Religion from the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley in 1996, and his Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology from Berkeley in 1999.
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