Patrick McKearney
University of Amsterdam
Patrick McKearney
Patrick McKearney is a social anthropologist researching intellectual disability across cultures. His teaching at the University of Amsterdam concentrates on the contribution of anthropological theory and research to debates about religion, health, disability, psychology, and ethics. He runs ethnographic projects with adults with intellectual disabilities in India, the UK, and Italy. His written work addresses the questions raised by the lives of these people for our thinking about care, ethics, and the mind. His current research has four foci:
- creating a systematic and psychologically-informed anthropology of intellectual disability
- developing an anthropological ethics of care
- comparing the relationship between care of dependents and intimacy across cultures
- researching and developing solutions to the care-deficits for adults with intellectual disabilities in the Global South
FURTHER INFORMATION
| Countries | Brazil; India; Italy; South Africa; United Kingdom (England); |
|---|---|
| Topics | Access to care; Age-friendliness; Attitudes and Expectations about Long-Term Care; Care in rural and other non-urban settings; Care inequalities; Care needs poverty and deprivation; Community-based LTC; Culturally appropriate LTC; Day Care; Demand for Long-Term Care; Ethics and care; Gender and care; Home/domiciliary care; Housing and care; Intergenerational approaches; Living arrangements; Long term care subsidies; LTC and people with learning disabilities; LTC and people with mental health conditions; LTC systems in LMIC countries; New models of care; Outcomes for unpaid/informal carers; Research gaps and priorities in LTC; Residential LTC services; Rights and people’s voices in LTC systems; Risk in Long-Term Care; Social Innovation in LTC; Stigma and discrimination; Support for unpaid carers; Unmet needs; Unpaid / informal care; |
| Methods | Case studies; Co-production methods; Creative research methods; Ethnography; Focus groups; Grounded Theory; Interviews; Knowledge-exchange; Longitudinal qualitative studies; Narrative evaluation methods; Observational studies; Participatory research methods; Practice-based approaches; Qualitative studies; Research ethics; Translation and cultural adaptation of instruments; |
| Role | Research; |
| Interest Groups | Care and social protection in Southern Africa; Innovation in Long-Term Care; Integrated Long-Term Care; Qualitative Research; Social Care Reform in England; Unmet need inequalities and care poverty (UNICAP); |
| Website | https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/m/c/p.t.mckearney/p.t.mckearney.html#Profile |
| GOOGLE SCHOLAR | https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=53z4oKgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra |
| Research interests | Intellectual disability, care, religion, ethics, psychological anthropology, medical anthropology, anthropology of religion, anthropology of care, anthropology of ethics, anthropology of disability |
| Key publications | 2024 At the Edges of Liberal Care: Disability and Ethics Between Dependence and Freedom. Current Anthropology. 2023, with Nicholas Evans ‘An Anthropology of Akrasia’ in McKearney, P. & N. Evans (eds.) Against Better Judgment: Akrasia in Anthropological Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books. 2023, With Tyler Zoanni ‘Anthropology and intellectual disability’ in R. T. Alexander, et al. (eds.), Psychiatry of Intellectual Disability Across Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2022 Disabling Violence: Intellectual Disability and the Limits of Ethical Engagement. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 28(3), 956-974 |