Michael Duke, PhD
Project Director, Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative
Michael Duke is a medical anthropologist whose ethnographic and mixed method work focuses primarily on the impact of contemporary and historical trauma on the physical and mental health of Latinx and Pacific Islander immigrant communities, particularly regarding drug and alcohol use, anxiety and depression, stress, and housing precarity.
After receiving his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, he was a researcher at the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford, CT, where he directed several studies on HIV risk among heroin injectors, and was the PI for a series of NIH-funded binational studies focusing on drinking, masculinity, and HIV risk among US-based migrant farmworkers and their home communities in Mexico. He then worked for several years at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, where he directed a number of Federally-funded mixed method studies focusing on drinking and occupational culture among blue collar workers. Most recently, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Memphis, where he coordinated a dual Master’s program in Public Health and Medical Anthropology. An author or co-author of numerous peer reviewed publications, he has also held affiliated faculty appointments at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Yale University Department of Psychiatry.
After receiving his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, he was a researcher at the Hispanic Health Council in Hartford, CT, where he directed several studies on HIV risk among heroin injectors, and was the PI for a series of NIH-funded binational studies focusing on drinking, masculinity, and HIV risk among US-based migrant farmworkers and their home communities in Mexico. He then worked for several years at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, where he directed a number of Federally-funded mixed method studies focusing on drinking and occupational culture among blue collar workers. Most recently, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of Memphis, where he coordinated a dual Master’s program in Public Health and Medical Anthropology. An author or co-author of numerous peer reviewed publications, he has also held affiliated faculty appointments at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Yale University Department of Psychiatry.