Vinh-Kim Nguyen

Vinh-Kim Nguyen is an anthropologist and physician, specializing in the treatment of HIV infection. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Montreal and currently holds the Chair in Anthropology and Global Health at the College of Global Studies of the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH). His work and commitment have focused since 1994 on the first community HIV/AIDS treatment programs in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali and Burkina Faso, then on the logic of sorting in access to antiretroviral therapies in Africa, which became widespread in the 2000s. He thus proposed to read through the history of international medical interventions in Africa the emergence of a new form of exercising political power: therapeutic sovereignty, based on both a logic of sorting and exception. Vinh-Kim Nguyen received the Aurore Prize from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2007 and the Joël Gregory Prize in 2012 for his book The Republic of Therapy, Triage and Sovereignty in West Africa’s Time of AIDS from Duke University Press published in 2010.