Faculty bio | Research website | 541-346-1363 

Anthropologist Kristin Yarris has an extensive background in public health and community public health. Her research focuses primarily on transnational migration and global mental health. She helped launch the UO’s Global Health Initiative, which involves a Global Health Minor and the Center for Global Health. She is affiliated with the Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Study of Women in Society and serves on the faculty advisory board of the Oregon Humanities Center. Yarris is also a proud member of the UO Dreamers Working Group and of the Latinx Advisory Group for Lane County Public Health. Her research has focused on transnational families and intergenerational caregiving in Nicaragua, and she has an ongoing ethnographic project examining transit migration through Mexico en route to the US. Another research area focuses on psychiatry, mental illness, and mental health care in Mexico. Yarris is able to speak on issues related to migration, health and illness, and the social and cultural determinants of health and mental health.

Recent Media: 
It’s time for Congress to act on DACA (The Hill, Dec. 9, 2022)
Was Oregon’s COVID-19 pivot enough to address racial inequities? (Oregon Public Broadcasting, March 18, 2021)
Northwest researchers find race disparities in COVID-19 vaccine trials (Oregon Public Broadcasting, Feb. 19, 2021)
Faculty books to be featured in 'UO Authors, Book Talks' series (Around the O, Oct. 17, 2019)
Public charge provisions hurt citizen children too (The Hill, Dec. 8, 2018)
Getting perspective from World Refugee Day (Jefferson Public Radio, June 19, 2017)
Visualizing risk and potential: Migrants in zones of transit (Youth Circulations, Jan. 25, 2016)
From alienation to protection: Central American child migration (AccessDenied, Sept. 4, 2014)
Flood of Central American immigrants is focus of UO researcher (Around the O, Aug. 20, 2014)