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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Loretta Lou

Assistant Professor

Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology
Fellow of the Institute for Medical Humanities

Biography

I am an anthropologist interested in the intersection of ecology, health, spirituality, healing, and activism. As an Asian specialist, I have conducted long-term fieldwork in various parts of China, including Hong Kong and Macau. I received my DPhil in Anthropology from Oxford University and was a Landhaus Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Germany in 2023.

My first project was an ethnographic study of 'green living' in Hong Kong, an environmental and cultural movement that encompasses a wide range of activities such as sustainable gardening, freeganism and freecycling, zero waste initiatives, non-toxic living, spiritual ecology, and more. My research demonstrates that green living is not merely an emerging lifestyle originating from the West, but a form of prefigurative environmentalism that responds to local societal and political challenges, with roots in traditional Chinese philosophy.

Building on my interest in agency and environmental movements, my second project focused on how Chinese people lived with toxic pollution by bargaining with their toxic heritage and coping through unnoticing. While these strategies highlight the lack of 'chemo-solidarity' in the face of environmental injustice, they also foreground the creative and life-affirming ways people in the Global South adapt to the Anthropocene. (This research was part of the ERC-funded project 'Toxic Expertise: Environmental Justice and the Global Petrochemical Industry,' Grant Agreement No. 639583).

In addition to my work on environmentalism, I have a sustained interest in health, healing, ethnomedicine, and medical pluralism. Prior to my PhD, I worked as a public health researcher and medical translator within the NHS. I have also researched how colonial legacies shape the research and writing of Macau's medical histories, how these histories are leveraged to serve contemporary political agendas, as well as nationalism and the legitimacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in postcolonial Macau.

My current project focuses on healing outside the clinic. Through an ethnographic study of healing and self-care at the intersection of ecology, mental health, and spirituality—a convergence that has received little attention—I explore what healing means and how various ecological and spiritual practices facilitate healing across diverse social and cultural settings in 'Global Asia'. The research seeks to contribute to the broader field of global mental health by illuminating alternatives to biomedical and psychiatric frameworks, enriching understandings of self-healing, and fostering more inclusive, cost-effective, and sustainable approaches to holistic wellbeing.

Underpinning all of my research are questions that revolve around agency, healing, resilience, responsibility, the interplay between self-cultivation and social transformation, and the production of knowledge and ignorance in the most mundane aspects of everyday life. I am an advocate of interdisciplinarity and strive to produce work that is accessible to audiences across multiple fields.

At Durham, I teach modules on the Anthropocene, Critical Global Health, Planetary Health, and Social Movements in the Department of Anthropology. I was a finalist for two teaching awards in 2024: 'Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning' and 'Inspirational Educator'. 

My latest publications can be found here.

Research interests

  • Ecology and Environmentalism
  • Health and Wellbeing
  • Mental health
  • Spirituality
  • Buddhism
  • Therapies and Healing
  • Self-care and Self-cultivation
  • Social movements
  • East and Southeast Asia, especially China

Esteem Indicators

Publications

Book review

Chapter in book

Journal Article

Supervision students

Bohan Xiao

Yumeng Liu