Maria Steinisch is a medical doctor writing her doctoral thesis on "Epidemiological Perspectives on Work stress in a Ready Made Garment Factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh" since January 2012. She is currently also completing her M.A. "Health and Society in South Asia" at the University of Heidelberg. Maria Steinisch studied Medicine in Heidelberg and Mannheim and completed clinical internships abroad, including India and Tanzania. Parallely, she studied Cultural Anthropology at the University of Heidelberg from 2005 to 2010. During her studies she has worked as a student assistant at the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context" in Heidelberg and completed several internships, including one at the WHO headquarter in Geneva. Her interests are cultural psychiatry and cultural/psychosocial factors of mental well being, the application of anthropological knowledge to health related programs - also but not only in the context of development - and the anthropology of efficacy in relation to the "placebo" effect.
