CPRC

Past Research: Professor Hirsch focuses on the social organization and public health implications of gender and sexuality, particularly attending to the intersection of these topics with Mexico-U.S. transnational immigration, fertility, and HIV. Her dissertation, which explored gender, sexuality and marriage in a Mexican trans-national community, exemplifies the application of anthropological theory and methods to the study of population dynamics. Dissertation findings, published in leading journals (1999, 2001, 2002) and as a book (2003), describe reproductive health practices in this trans-national community and trace the connections between these practices, the emergence of a companionate model of marital relations, and the changing social organization of gender and sexuality. With support from Emory’s Center for AIDS Research, Hirsch’s subsequent ethnographic research with migrant Mexican men in Atlanta laid the foundation for her first R01, a comparative ethnographic study exploring how changing notions of love and persistent gender inequality shape married women’s risk for HIV infection. The Love, Marriage and HIV project has already resulted in a series of publications in the American Journal of Public Health (2007) and an edited volume (forthcoming from Vanderbilt Press). While at Emory, Hirsch also served as Associate Director of the Emory AIDS International Training and Research Program. Hirsch’s early-career promise is reflected in her receipt in 2002 of the Outstanding Young Professional Award from APHA’s Population, Family Planning and Reproductive Health Section, and by her participation in the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch’s 2002 long-range planning efforts.

Present Research: Since joining Columbia’s faculty in 2004 as Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences, Hirsch has continued to work at the intersection of anthropology, population studies, and public health, editing two recent volumes on love, sexual and reproductive health, and globalization and developing a new program of research on the social and health impacts of increasing access to anti-retroviral therapy (ART). A forthcoming peer-reviewed supplement of AIDS on the broad social impacts of increasing access to ART, guest edited by Hirsch, Richard Parker, and Peter Aggleton, includes an introductory editorial for which Hirsch is first author and a single-authored paper in which she explores the intersections between the social science of gender and sexuality and ART scale-up. With her Love, Marriage and HIV team, Hirsch is developing a new project to explore how individuals in the five study countries integrate ART into their sexual and reproductive life projects. At Columbia, Hirsch is a linchpin of the integration of social science theory and methods into public health research, directing the Anthropology Concentration of the SMS doctoral program and serving as Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Methods Core of the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, an NIMH-funded P30 Center, whose mission is to enhance HIV-related research across the Columbia University Medical Center. Hirsch is also PI of the Social Science Training and Research (STAR) Partnership, an NIH-funded collaboration to enhance social science HIV research capacity in Vietnam (R24, approved by Council and currently awaiting an NGA). As PI of the STAR Partnership and Co-Chair of the CUPC Developmental Core, Hirsch is well-positioned to facilitate the development of collaborations between Columbia investigators and researchers at Vietnamese peer institutions.

Future Research: Building on her prior work in Atlanta, and in collaboration with Miguel Muñoz-Laboy who has been conducting research with Mexican migrant men in New York on HIV risk, Hirsch plans comparative research exploring how contextual factors shape immigrant settlement processes and health outcomes. This will serve as the first of a series of research projects exploring health and settlement among New York’s Mexican migrant population. The innovative model for policy translation in Hirsch’s new comparative research on the social impacts of ART will benefit from and contribute to CUPC’s substantial expertise in the paths through which social science shapes public policy.

CUPC: Hirsch co-chairs the Developmental Infrastructure core, co-facilitates the HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health signature area group, and is a member of the Steering Committee.

Professor Hirsch's Departmental Biography Page