Assistant Professor
Office Location: WT 421
Phone Number: (262) 472-1728
Email Address: oldanim@uww.edu

Michael J. Oldani is an Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology. He received his doctorate from Princeton University in 2006 (BS/’89 from UW-Parkside; MS/’98 from UW-Milwaukee). He specializes in the study of ‘pharmaceutical culture’ and its impact on medicine/psychiatry, society, and individuals. His ethnographic research has focused on the sales activities of pharmaceutical salespersons, or “drug reps,” and their impact on doctor prescribing habits (He worked for Pfizer, Inc. from 1989 to 1998.) as well as the effects of psychiatric medication on personhood and family life. In particular, studying the interplay between cultural “scripts” or plots and psychotropic drug prescribing. His fieldwork has taken place in both the United States and Canada, where he received a Fulbright grant to study the effects of psychiatric medication on the home life in both Anglo and Aboriginal families. He has published his research in Discourse, Kroeber Society Papers, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Transcultural Psychiatry and in the recent collection Killer Commodities: Public Health and the Corporate Production of Harm. He is currently working on an ethnographic book manuscript – ‘Tales from the Script’ – focusing on the impact of pharmaceutical culture in North America.