Allan Young, PhD

Allan Young is Professor of Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal. He is chairman of the Department of Social Studies of Medicine, and a member of the Departments of Anthropology and Psychiatry. His Ph.D. is from the University of Pennsylvania (1970). His earliest ethnographic research was in highland Ethiopia, and concerned traditional medical practices. He later conducted research in Nepal, focused on the efforts of the Nepali government's integrate Ayuvedic medicine into its national health programme.

In 1986, he was invited to conduct ethnographic research at the newly created National Center for Stress Recovery, a psychiatric unit mandated by the US Congress for the treatment of traumatized veterans of the Vietnam War. A book based on this research, "The Harmony of Illusions," published in 1995. For this work, he was awarded the book received the Wellcome Medal for Research in Anthropology as Applied to a Medical Subject. His forthcoming research focuses on the transfer and transformation of bioscience knowledge (among genetic researchers, clinical psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies, and lay populations) concerning gene-based vulnerability to psychiatric disorders. He is on the editorial board of several journals, including the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Transcultural Psychiatry, and Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.