Margaret Lock, McGill University
Professor Emerita Social Studies of Medicine Montreal, Quebec margaret.lock@mcgill.ca
Bio/Research
Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita in Social Studies in Medicine, and is affiliated with the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officier de L’Ordre national d...
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Bio/Research
Margaret Lock is the Marjorie Bronfman Professor Emerita in Social Studies in Medicine, and is affiliated with the Department of Social Studies of Medicine and the Department of Anthropology at McGill University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Officier de L’Ordre national du Québec. Lock was awarded the Prix Du Québec, domaine Sciences Humaines in 1997 and in the same year the Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain. In 2002 she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize and in 2005 the Canada Council for the Arts Killam Prize. In 2005 she was also awarded a Trudeau Foundation Fellowship and was named a Grande Montréalaise, Secteur Social. In 2008 Lock received the Career Achievement Award of the Society of Medical Anthropology, American Anthropological Association.
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Margaret Lock’s research focuses on a comparative anthropology of medicine and biomedical technologies. Lock initially researched the 20th century revival of the indigenous Japanese medical system that continues to proliferate to the present day. She has also carried out ethnographic inquiries into adolescence, female mid life, and old age. Her book Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America, published in 1993 by the University of California Press, won six prizes including the Staley Prize of the School of American Research, the Canada-Japan Book Prize, and the Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. In 2002 the University of California Press published Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, also an award-winning book. This volume documents professional and public disputes about the recognition of brain death as the end of human life in order that organs can be legally procured for transplant. A book written together with Vinh-Kim Nguyen entitled An Anthropology of Medicine, that examines the global impact of biomedical technologies is in press with Wiley/Blackwells. Lock is currently investigating the contribution of postgenomic knowledge and new imaging technologies to the destabilization of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
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Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Margaret Lock’s research focuses on a comparative anthropology of medicine and biomedical technologies. Lock initially researched the 20th century revival of the indigenous Japanese medical system that continues to proliferate to the present day. She has also carried out ethnographic inquiries into adolescence, female mid life, and old age. Her book Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America, published in 1993 by the University of California Press, won six prizes including the Staley Prize of the School of American Research, the Canada-Japan Book Prize, and the Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. In 2002 the University of California Press published Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, also an award-winning book. This volume documents professional and public disputes about the recognition of brain death as the end of human life in order that organs can be legally procured for transplant. A book written together with Vinh-Kim Nguyen entitled An Anthropology of Medicine, that examines the global impact of biomedical technologies is in press with Wiley/Blackwells. Lock is currently investigating the contribution of postgenomic knowledge and new imaging technologies to the destabilization of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
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