Hello, and welcome to my e-portfolio! This platform will document the incredible opportunity I‘ve had to conduct eight weeks of medical anthropological research in Tanzania, during May, June, and early July of 2023. Please browse on to learn more. Thank you for joining me here, and I hope you enjoy!

At right, a photo that I took from a bajaj, alternatively known as a tuk-tuk or auto rickshaw in other parts of the world (and which is the best form of transportation in Tanzania, objectively).

Ok, this photo may have been taken in

Greece on a separate occasion, but still...

Hello, again! In case it wasn’t already made clear above, my name is Jacob J. Roman; my pronouns are he/they. I'm an undergraduate student and fledgling medical anthropological researcher, currently in my third year in the Honors Program at the University of Florida. I primarily study anthropology and political science while being on the pre-med (MD-PhD) track.

My principal academic and research interests include critical medical anthropology, feminist International Relations, pain and palliative care, queer/gender/feminist theory, postpositivism (esp. post-structuralism), (clinical) ethnographic methods/methodology, cross-cultural comparison (but also the complex historical analysis and contextualization of individual cultures), literary analysis, and the translation of critical theory into praxis.

On the fun side of things (not that scholarly pursuits aren‘t fun, but everyone needs some other substance to their life), I‘m super into queer literature: some of my favorite books include The Song of Achilles, Call Me By Your Name, Autoboyography, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, and Harsh Cravings. I find deep joy in brewing and drinking inordinate amounts of tea, and coffee too, for that matter. I love my friends, I love my family, and I love my friends who feel like family; so, you‘ll catch me spending many of my free moments with them. I‘m a foodie and I very much enjoy cooking (which works out perfectly). I love to learn, especially about people and all their idiosyncracies, and so I‘m naturally inclined toward people-watching and exploring the social sciences. And, I like to fancy myself complex enough so as to not be reducible to these three paragraphs...but, hey, they‘re a good start. :)

Research Background

Funding Sources/Disclosure:

The research I conducted in Tanzania occured under the umbrella of a larger, three-year National Science Foundation-funded project titled “The Meanings of Pain and the Formation of Pain Care Practices in Tanzania.“ (The Principal Investigator of this project is my mentor, Dr. Adrienne E. Strong, Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at UF.) As such, my primary source of funding for my subproject, titled “The Gender(ed) Relations of Pain Care and Pain Management Practices in Tanzanian Clinical Settings,“ was a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant from the National Science Foundation, of which I am very appreciative. I am similarly grateful for the additional funding for this (sub)project provided by (1) the Summer Undergraduate International Research Program (SUIRP) through the UF Center for Undergraduate Research (CUR) and (2) the CLAS Scholars Program through the UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Research Locations: The Tanzanian national cancer hospital in Dar es Salaam and a district-level hospital in Iringa, Tanzania

Theoretical Background/Rationale for Doing This Research:

• Where pain and pain care/management exists (everywhere!), gender inequities follow by way of normative biases about how women and men should experience pain, to what degree each gender feels pain, and how genders are differentially treated for their pain (Samulowitz et al. 2018)
  
• This is particularly visible in Tanzania because historically and presently, the prevailing cultural (and governmental) regime in Tanzania is generally patriarchal, hegemonically masculine, gender essentialist, and queerphobic (Ceesay 2013)
  
• The development of this project was catalyzed through my thinking about the concepts of gender performativity (Butler 1990) and how one is born biologically sexed, but not gendered, so the gendered nature of one’s identity is formulated through complex internal and external social dialogue–through intra- and interpersonal gender creation (de Beauvoir 1949); also, sex and gender are coproductive, but that’s a topic for another time; and, though the genesis of my thinking is in Western, white gender theory, I plan to engage more with the literature and perspectives of African feminist, critical, and postcolonial scholars when analyzing/writing up my data (anti-epistemic violence!)
  
• So, I became interested in how gender theory and the anthropology of health could mesh in the specific context of pain care/management in Tanzanian clinical settings, generating questions about (1) how men and women might differentially experience and conceptualize their pain and gender-differentiated access to pain care/management, but also (2) how experiences/performances of pain by men and women (including acceptance or refusal of pain mitigation) might serve to produce and reproduce/reinforce gender roles in the Tanzanian context
  

At left, please find my collection of photos that I feel best summarize my experience in Tanzania--especially the most fun and exciting parts!

If you think you’d enjoy browsing through the photobook, then please turn your eyes to the box at left, enlarge it to fit your full screen (if you’d like), and scroll away! Thanks for joining in remembering the subjects of these photos with me!

To the right, you can find my e-diary from my time in Tanzania. The blue slides are prefaces, but the first eight white slides are personal reflections and the latter eight white slides are research reflections.

Please direct your gaze to the box at right, enlarge it to fit your full screen (if you wish), and begin perusing my reflections at your leisure. Thanks for reading!

If I’m out on a hike when you call, then please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!