Carina Heckert

Carina Heckert is a medical anthropologist with research interests in global health, maternal health, gender, immigration, and ethnographic research methods. Her research explores the ways policies generate maternal harm for Latinas in the US-Mexico border region during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period. The border city of El Paso, TX has experienced overlapping sociopolitical crises related to the enactment of immigration and border policies, one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history, and a COVID-19 death rate that was significantly higher than other major cities. Her work explores how these crises become embodied through various forms of maternal harm. Her second book, Birth in Times of Despair: Reproductive Violence on the US-Mexico Border (New York University Press, 2024), is based on this research.