Dr. Michelle Pentecost

Biography

Michelle Pentecost is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at King's College London, focusing on Global Health. As a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, she leads the Trajectories project, in collaboration with the Healthy Early Life Trajectories Initiative (HeLTI). She holds honorary affiliations with the University of the Witwatersrand, the Geneva Graduate Institute, and the University of Cape Town. Her academic training includes clinical medicine (University of Cape Town, 2008) and medical anthropology (University of Oxford, 2017). Michelle's research spans various disciplines including anthropology, clinical medicine, urban studies, and public health, particularly emphasizing critical approaches to global health and social medicine in Africa. Her primary research centers on social science early life interventions, conducted through extensive ethnographic fieldwork on maternal and child health in South Africa. She has published widely, including her book "Politics of Potential: Global Health Gendered Futures in South Africa" (Rutgers University Press, 2024), which investigates new scientific understandings of developmental origins of health and disease. In addition to her research, Michelle is the lead editor of the forthcoming "Cambridge Handbook of DOHaD and Society" (Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Research Interests