Mark Luborsky, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and director of Aging and Health Disparities Research in the Institute of Gerontology, and Andrea Sankar, Ph.D., professor of anthropology and director of Medical Anthropology, were selected through a competitive process to co-edit the international peer-reviewed journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly for the next four years. Published by the University of California Press, MAQ publishes research and theory in the field of medical anthropology and has an individual circulation of over 2,000, as well as subscriptions by all major American and international universities through web-based AnthroSource, University of California Press. Over half of the journals’ submissions come from international scholars.

Through their co-editorship of MAQ, Drs. Luborsky and Sankar hope to encourage and support excellence across the widest range of medical anthropology. Dr. Sankar shares, “We envision the journal as the recognized forum for vibrant seminal debates and refinement of ideas and methods in medical anthropology, and for exploring how the field relates to health practice and anthropology in general. We also envision an even more rigorous MAQ that fosters chafing and fraying of juxtaposed arguments and findings as well as those that smoothly confirm each other.” Drs. Luborsky and Sankar plan to increase the national and international recognition of MAQ among authors and readers within the Society for Medical Anthropology, the parent organization of the journal, and to cultivate SMA members’ sense of MAQ as their own academic and professional community. Dr. Luborsky adds, “MAQ is, ideally, the main shared commons where SMA weaves together the diverse threads of intellectual and methodological tradition and socially engaged goals representing the whole SMA membership and MAQ readership.”

Drs. Luborsky and Sankar bring to their new roles editorial expertise, experience guiding peer review processes, and national and international leadership and organizational skills. Both have specialization in multiple conceptual frameworks and methods, as well as impressive funding and publication records. Committed mentors and teachers (both have received the Presidential Awards as Outstanding Mentors), Drs. Luborsky and Sankar are excited to have the opportunity to provide additional training opportunities and recruitment appeal for College of Liberal Arts and Sciences graduate and undergraduate students through the co-editorship. Peter Lichtenberg, director of the Institute of Gerontology, thinks Drs. Luborsky and Sankar will make outstanding editors. He elaborates, “Individually and jointly, they are extremely successful interdisciplinary scholars in anthropology and across a wide disciplinary range including humanities, social sciences, and medical areas. They have a proven record of successfully designing, conducting, and completing large scale projects in addition to their administrative roles in our programs.”

Both Dr. Lichtenberg and Dean Robert Thomas, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, committed creative and generous resources to enable the successful submission. Bringing the journal to WSU will spread the university’s national and international reputation for excellence in research, scholarship, public health, and policy and will increase Drs. Luborsky and Sankar’s competitive advantage when applying for external funding. In addition, it will build upon and advance professional strengths in the Department of Anthropology and the Medical Anthropology program.

Dr. Mark Luborsky earned his bachelor’s degree with honors in anthropology from Hobart & William Smith Colleges and his doctoral degree in social anthropology from the University of Rochester in New York. He joined WSU in 1997.

Dr. Andrea Sankar earned a bachelor’s in Chinese Language and Literature and master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Michigan. She joined WSU in 1989.