Holly Wardlow is a Full Professor and the former Chair of the Department of Anthropology (St. George campus). She is interested in issues that emerge at the intersection of power, gender, agency, the body, and health. Her early research focused on “passenger women” in Papua New Guinea, women who exchange sex for money, and are stigmatized by others for their transgressive behaviors, but do not fit the assumptions many people might bring to the category of “sex work.” She analyzed passenger women’s sexual transactions as expressions of “negative agency,” a mode of action that entails the refusal to cooperate with others’ plans and expectations (such as getting or staying married). In response to unavenged violence towards themselves or beloved female kin, passenger women were often trying to punish and shame their families by refusing to marry or abandoning existing marriages.

Professor Wardlow’s most recent research investigates HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea, particularly its gendered dimensions and consequences. Based on research spanning 10 years, she analyzes women’s encounters with HIV as pathogen, site of family and governmental discipline, and affective and moral experience. She examines important sources of HIV vulnerability for women, such as proximity to gold and oil extraction sites, as well as their strategies for managing others’ anxieties and suspicions about them after they have been diagnosed HIV-positive.