Johanna Richlin

I specialize in the anthropology of religion and psychological and medical anthropology, with expertise in evangelical Christianity in the U.S. and Brazil, U.S. migration, studies of affect and emotion, and gender, health and society.

My first research project explored the impact of U.S. migration experience on the varied religious beliefs, choices, and sentiments of Brazilian migrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. From this body of research, I published a research article in Current Anthropology, entitled “The Affective Therapeutics of Migrant Faith: Evangelical Christianity among Brazilians in Greater Washington, D.C” (2019), and completed my first book, In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience In the United States (Princeton University Press, 2022). My research was reviewed in The Economist (“Religion and Vulnerability: Why Charismatic Christianity is Popular with Migrants” (2019)) and featured on The Chris Voss Show (2022).

My current research investigates U.S. healthcare experience and vaccine beliefs, behaviors, and solidarities among diverse demographics. The first publication related to this project, “From Iatrogenesis to Vaccine Skepticism: U.S. Mothers’ Negative Vaccine Perceptions and Non-vaccination Practices as Reverberations of Medical Harm,” was published last spring (2023) in Medical Anthropology Quarterly.