HMS Faculty

Director of Health, Medicine, & Society Program

Lorenzo Servitje, Ph.D.
Director of HMS, Associate Professor of English

Dr. Servitje has been with Lehigh University since July, 2017. He became the Director of the Health, Medicine, and Society Program in July 2022. His research focuses on medical discourse and literature and history. He is currently working on a book project “Medicine is War: The Marital Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture,” that traces the history of the metaphorical militarization of

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Core Faculty

Kelly Austin, Ph.D.
Professor, Sociology & Anthropology

Dr. Austin's research and teaching interests include global development and inequality, global health, the environment, and quantitative and qualitative research methods. Since arriving at Lehigh in 2012, Austin has continued to develop research investigating the social and environmental causes of HIV, TB, and malaria in developing nations. Austin’s fieldwork is centered in rural Uganda, where

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Christopher Burke, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology

My research focuses on the links between stress and physical/mental health and the social/structural factors that strengthen or weaken such links. Stress is intimately linked to public health issues, as it can be both an antecedent and a consequence of chronic health problems. It is perhaps not surprising that chronic health problems can be a source of stress, but recent work also shows that

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Elizabeth A. Dolan, Ph.D.
Professor of English

Dr. Dolan researches and teaches 18th -century literature and contemporary illness narratives. Her book Seeing Suffering in Women’s Literature of the Romantic Era (Ashgate 2008) addresses 18th-century medical topics such as melancholia, contagious eye disease, health travel, and the impoverished ill.  She taught literature to medical students for three years in the Department of

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Linda Lowe-Krentz, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair of Biological Sciences; Director of Biochemistry

Dr. Lowe-Krentz is also affiliated with the bioengineering department and is a member of the health professions advisory committee at Lehigh. Her research in vascular cell signal transduction and stress is supported by the NIH and currently also by a CORE grant with Dr. Kathy Iovine to translate the work into zebrafish. She teaches Biochemistry courses and signal transduction.

Jessecae Marsh, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Interdisciplinary Programs and International Initiatives, Associate Professor of Psychology

Dr. Marsh joined Lehigh in 2011 and is an associate professor in the Psychology Department. She was the director of the Health, Medicine, and Society program from July, 2017 to July 2022. She completed her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at Yale University in 2008 and spent three years as an assistant professor at Texas Tech University before joining Lehigh’s faculty. Dr. Marsh’s research

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Lucy Napper, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Director of Health, Medicine, and Society

Dr. Napper received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research focuses on responses to health-risk information, attitude and behavior change, and the assessment of health-related cognition and behaviors. She explores the influence of peers and parents on substance use and sexual risk behaviors of emerging adults. She also studies the efficacy of interventions

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Professors Emeritus

Stephen Cutcliffe, Ph.D.
Professor of History, Emeritus
Dena Davis, Ph.D.
Presidential Endowed Chair in Health - Humanities/Social Sciences; Professor of Religion Studies; Associate Director of Personnel for Health, Medicine and Society

Dr. Davis came to Lehigh after teaching at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (Cleveland State University) and Central Michigan University. She received her doctorate in religion from the University of Iowa and her J.D. from University of Virginia. Her specialty is bioethics, and her specific focus is on the ethics of genetic medicine and genetic research. Dr. Davis' latest book is Genetic

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Arthur King, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics, Emeritus
Judith N. Lasker, Ph.D.
NEH Distinguished Professor of Sociology & Anthropology Emeritus

Dr. Lasker’s major area of interest in both teaching and research is in the field of medical sociology, with particular emphasis on women’s health issues and international health. She has carried out extensive research on pregnancy loss and infertility and is co-author with Susan Borg of two books on these subjects, When Pregnancy Fails; Families Coping with Miscarriage, Ectopic Pregnancy

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Larry Silberstein, Ph.D.
Philip and Muriel Berman Professor of Jewish Studies, Emeritus
Barbara Traister, Ph.D.
Professor of English, Emeritus