Seth M. Holmes

Seth M. Holmes is Chancellor's Professor (2022 - 2025) at UC Berkeley in Society and Environment (Department of Environmental Science, Policy, Management) and Medical Anthropology and affiliated faculty in the School of Public Health. He has been Co-Director (with Ian Whitmarsh) of the MD/PhD Track in Medical Anthropology coordinated between UCSF and UC Berkeley and Founder and Co-Chair (with Charles Briggs) of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine. 

Research Description

Holmes investigates social hierarchies, health, health care and the naturalization and normalization of difference and inequality in the context of transnational US-Mexico im/migration. This project led to the publication of the book, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United Status (California Series in Public Anthropology, University of California Press, 2013). In addition to academic articles and the book, Holmes has written about this research for Salon.com, Access Denied, and The Huffington Post and has been interviewed on multiple NPR, PRI, Pacifica Radio, and Radio Bilingue shows. Concurrently, Holmes is conducting research into the production of the clinical habitus, subjectivity, and gaze, in other words, the processes through which biomedical trainees learn to perceive and respond to social differences and inequalities. In addition, Holmes is leading a European Research Council project, FOODCIRCUITS: Hidden Connections Between Migrants and Society and working on a book project focused on the social, symbolic, and political processes through which second generation members of migrant farmworker families aspire for and work toward change in transnational food systems, in their communities and in their own lives. Holmes is also co-leading “Cases in Global Social Medicine” in The Lancet. Along with other academics, clinicians, activists and artists in the Structural Competency Working Group, Holmes is engaged in imagining and experimenting with alternatives to the current systems of health care and racialized policing in the U.S.

Education

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, Columbia University

Fellow, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard University

Fellow, Department of Anthropology and Division of Medical Humanities, University of Rochester

Intern and Resident, Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D., Medical Anthropology, UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco

M.D., School of Medicine, UC San Francisco

B.S., Ecology and Spanish / Latin American Studies, University of Washington

Recent Teaching

Holmes designed ESPM 162A: Health, Medicine, Society and Environment, which is cross-listed between ESPM and Anthropology and receives support from “The Art of Writing” Program at UC Berkeley.

For graduate students, he has taught “Enviro-Anthropo-Genesis”, “Ethnography: Theory and Method” (with Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Deborah Gordon), “Structural Competency: New Medicine for the Inequalities that Make Us Sick” (with Denise Herd, Kelly Knight, and Shirley Strong) as well as “Queer Health” (with Lawrence Cohen).

Selected Publications

• Holmes SM. et. Al. 2022. “Misdiagnosis, mistreatment, and harm - when medical care ignores social forces.” The New England Journal of Medicine. 382 (12), 1083-1086. 

• Holmes, SM. 2023. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Updated with a New Preface and Epilogue with J Ramirez-Lopez). University of California Press.  [Translated into 6 other languages and available as an audio book.]

• Holmes, SM. 2024. “Migration et exploitation des travailleur·se·s agricoles aujourd’hui. De l’importance de relier les enjeux de racialisation, migrations et santé”, Anthropologie & Santé, 28. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/anthropologiesante/13383.

• Holmes, SM et. al. 2025. “Translational social medicine for global health: introducing Cases in Global Social Medicine.” The Lancet. 406 (10517), 2306-2307.

• Holmes, S.M. 2025. “Learning Language, Un/Learning Empathy in Medical School.” Cult Med Psychiatry 49, 40–64.

Selected Honors and Awards

• Rudolf Virchow Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology

• New Millennium Book Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology

• Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Award

• Association for Humanist Sociology Book Award

• James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers

• Margaret Mead Award

• Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology

• Best Documentary Short Honorary Mention (Producer), Society for Visual Anthropology

• Best Short Documentary (Producer), ImagineNative Film Festival

• Best Youth Film (Producer), San Diego Latino Film Festival

• Best Latino Film (Producer), Sacramento Film Festival

• William T. Grant Mentor Award

• Mentor Award (FoJMP), MD/MS, Joint Medical Program (UCB/UCSF)

• Committee on Teaching Excellence Award (UCB School of Public Health)