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(1935-2024)
On July 5, 2024 Dr. Alan Harwood, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, died at the Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst, Massachusetts surrounded by his children, Jessica and Seth Harwood, and his wife, Margot Welch.
Alan first came to UMass Boston in 1972, and for the next 30 years until retirement in 2002 played a pivotal role in establishing and leading the university’s Anthropology Department. He was department chair for three different terms that spanned the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and for a time was Director of Core Curriculum, and the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education, for the College of Arts and Sciences. He led the deep integration of Anthropology’s broad offerings into the Core Curriculum for undergraduates, with different courses fulfilling requirements in social sciences, natural sciences, historical & cultural studies, and the arts. In the 1990s, he was also an adjunct professor for a decade in UMass Boston’s Clinical Psychology PhD program, and from 1992-2003 was Lecturer at the Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
In his career, Alan was an active part of wider, including international, research and professional networks in medical anthropology and public health, with a focus on ethnic diversity in medical care needs and treatment modes. In addition to teaching for 30 years at UMass Boston, early in his career Alan was also faculty at New York University, the University of Auckland (New Zealand), Brown University, and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York). Prior to arriving in Boston, in the late 1960s he was also Director of Community Research at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Neighborhood Health Center in the Bronx, New York. Later while at the university in Boston, from 1993-95 he was co-principal investigator of “An intensive study of functioning and Well-Being in Five Ethnic communities,” at the Health Institute of Tufts New England Medical Center.
He was editor for a decade of the Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology series, and inaugural editor of the American Anthropological Association’s Medical Anthropology Quarterly (MAQ) in the 1980s, with editorial offices at UMass Boston. Alan was recipient in 1982 of the prestigious Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, recognizing his groundbreaking research in anthropology as applied to medical problems. For more than a decade, until 2009, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Society for Medical Anthropology. In 2019, he became the inaugural recipient of the Hazel Weidman Award for Exemplary Service to the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), named after one of the discipline’s early advocates. In her comments, the SMA President at the time, Arachu Castro, described Dr. Harwood’s “incredible generosity and encouragement” as editor toward contributors, authors and reviewers, adding that Alan “laid the foundation and set the bar high for MAQ’s academic excellence,” inspiring a new generation of medical anthropologists.
In addition to authoring dozens of articles and book chapters, Alan was author of the books: Witchcraft, Sorcery and Social Categories among the Safwa, reporting on his early research in Tanzania; Rx: Spiritist as Needed: A Study of a Puerto Rican Community Mental Health Resource; and Ethnicity and Medical Care.
Many colleagues and former students recount the kindness, trustworthiness, and support Alan always provided them. He was deeply appreciated as a role model, a mentor, a leader, and as a wise sage who offered groundedness and wisdom.
(Patrick Clarkin, Ping-Ann Addo, Tim Sieber)