Araceli Alonso

I was born and raised in Madrid, Spain. When I was twelve, against many odds I vowed to my mother that someday I would travel the globe, heal people, and narrate human life, any life; and I did! With a Nursing degree, a Bachelor in History, a Master of Science, a Master of Arts, and a Ph.D. in Anthropology I have managed to travel the globe, heal people, and narrate stories of human life, any life.

In my observations, I capture uncommon ordinary people’s insights, especially women’s insights that I later intertwine with research and thought, weaving their oral discourses into the complex textile of life—lives deeply lived within culture, politics, health and disease, history, religion and beyond.

I am a university professor that teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on global women’s health and women’s rights, in Spain and in the United States. My work with women and girls in rural Kenya, through my own non-profit organization Nikunbuke-Health by Motorbike (N-HbM) has received the 2013 United Nations Public Service Award and the 2013 Jefferson Award for Public Service, recognitions that have pushed me to travel farther, heal deeper, and write more intensely about human life, any life.

My next book “Under the Net: Where Malaria and Gender Intersect” uses rigorous academic research, and as Out of Havana moves beyond the confines of structural analysis, for which there are often numerous published sources in the academic world, into the subjective experience of people’s lives, especially women’s lives as they pact with one of the deadliest diseases in the world today: malaria.