Caroline Meier zu Biesen is a medical anthropologist and sociologist with a long-standing research interest in Global and also Planetary Health. She is currently Assistant Professor of Transdisciplinary Global Health at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Using transdisciplinary methods and grounded in the anthropology and sociology of science, her research spans care, transnational therapeutic mobility, ecological challenges, and scientific practice in the context of global epidemics (HIV/AIDS, malaria, NCDs, COVID-19), as well as neglected, chronic, and often gendered diseases such as endometriosis.
Caroline is the co-founder of the scientific network Planetary Health: Planetary Thinking in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Her current work focuses on contextualizing human–environment relations within the dynamics of capitalist-driven economic growth, anthropogenic climate and environmental crises, and their health effects. In this context, her research examines health and ecosystem challenges related to NCDs, analyzing how the rise of chronic diseases is shaped by socio-economic conditions, disease categorization, and environmental toxification. Building on these insights, she seeks to develop inclusive, context-responsive, pluralistic, and ecologically attuned health interventions on a planetary scale.
Her work on endometriosis brings together patient activism, experiential knowledge, and a drive for systemic change by situating it as a historically stigmatized disease shaped by institutional neglect. She explores how intersecting structures of gender, race, age, and other axes of social recognition shape experiences of illness, framing endometriosis as an urgent feminist concern. Her research highlights how epistemic recognition and rightful inclusion within socio-epistemic practices can foster more affirmative self-relations for people living with contested conditions.
Before joining Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Leipzig, the Free University of Berlin, and at the CNRS in Paris.
She is a member of the initiative Women in Global Health—A Movement for Gender Equality in Global Health Leadership (WGH), the German Alliance for Global Health Research (GLOHRA), the German Association of Cultural Anthropologists (DGSKA), and the Amsterdam Public Health research institute (APH).
