Teaching Fellows

Lorna Hadlock is a postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Comparative Human Development and the College.

She is a psychological and medical anthropologist researching cross-cultural and cross-species encounters related to healing in the Peruvian Amazon and Andes. In her work, she addresses how language and culture influence experiences of healing, the body, and encounters with non-human others such as plants and spirits. Furthermore, she is interested in the transformative potential of encounters with others (interpersonal, cultural, and non-human), and how people manage the self/other boundary. 

Her dissertation research focuses on a shamanic training center in the Peruvian Amazon where an indigenous Shipibo healer trains Western apprentices. The dissertation examines how Western students interpret Shipibo healing concepts and experience interactions with Amazonian plant spirits. Through their training, students learn to manage a unique relationship with specific Amazonian plants in which they merge the plant with their bodies and selves, becoming human-plant hybrids. Through the merging process, they develop their ability to listen and respond to plants.

Lorna will teach in the Mind sequence and offer courses on Anthropology of Embodiment and Psychedelic Healing and Spirituality.