Skye Naslund, PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography, has been awarded the Richard and Joanne Morrill Graduate Student Fellowship. The Richard and Joanne Morrill Graduate Student Fellowship provides an award of $10,000 to a geography graduate student who is writing up their dissertation. The fellowship will fund Skye’s last quarter of dissertation writing and completion in Spring Quarter.
Skye’s dissertation is motivated by the desire to better understand the production and circulation of health knowledge and how discourse shapes our understanding of health and disease. Her work specifically does this by looking at the use of parasites to treat autoimmune diseases, which is also called helminthic therapy. Her research uses original survey data, qualitative interviews, and a digital ethnography to examine the rise of do-it-yourself helminthic therapy. She argues that these practices are both resistance to and continuation of neoliberal practices in the western medical system.