Scholar Profile

Bri Matusovsky

Public Health

Biography

Bri (they/them) is a graduate from Yale University, where they earned their Bachelors degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, with an interdisciplinary certificate in Global Health Studies. They are currently a graduate student at the UC San Francisco - UC Berkeley joint PhD program in Medical Anthropology. In their free-time, Bri enjoys yoga, meditating, reading and writing poetry, trying new recipes, and testing out new flavors as they brew their own kombucha.

Their PhD dissertation draws on scholarship about laboratory science, critical STS, Caribbean post-colonial theory, and invasive monkeys. Specifically, Bri is planning on conducting ethnographic research in St. Kitts and Nevis on what is known as "the monkey problem," or the increasing encounters between humans and monkeys on the islands as related to environmental changes. This fieldwork aims to better document the social, political, and economic shifts that are arising due to this ecological dilemma. This project occurs at the intersection of research on the political and economic ramifications of post-colonial transitions in St. Kitts and in the Caribbean, and global debates over managing populations of monkeys seen as too little or too high. Studying the relationships between animals and humans can help us understand how the legacies of colonialism continue to affect our more-than-human world. This project offers a novel way to think about power that places the lived experiences of humans and animals side by side, not pitting justice for animals and justice for humans against one another but rather encompassing both as sites of inquiry for the present and inspiration for the future.

High school:  Santa Monica High School

Degrees