Aalyia Sadruddin

Assistant Professor of Cultural Medical Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Postdoctoral Fellow in International and Public Affairs, 2019-2020

Biography

Trained in medical and political anthropology, Aalyia Sadruddin’s research focuses on issues of demographic transitions and socio-political recovery in the wake of violence in contemporary Africa. Since 2014, Sadruddin has conducted research on the processes and politics of aging in post-genocide Rwanda.

 Her academic writing has been published in Anthropology Now, Medical Anthropology, and Social Science & Medicine.

Prior to joining the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Sadruddin completed a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She will graduate with her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University in December 2020. 

Research

Sadruddin’s first book project, “Aging After Genocide,” explores the practices and politics of everyday life in Rwanda, a quarter of a century after the 1994 genocide. Telling this story from the perspective of elderly Rwandans who endured multiple episodes of ethnic violence between the late Belgian colonial (1957-1962) and post-colonial (1963-1994) periods, this project demonstrates how members of this generation engage on matters of security and governance in a time of relative political stability. In a country where the legacy of genocide remains controversial, “Aging After Genocide” calls for renewed attention to be paid to the “small things” that Rwandans—across ethnicity and generation—are doing for and with each other in order to achieve reconciliation.

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2020      Sadruddin, Aalyia and Marcia C. Inhorn. Aging, Vulnerability and Questions of Care in the Time of COVID-19. Anthropology Now, 12(1): 17-23.

2019      Sadruddin, Aalyia. The Care of ‘Small Things’: Aging and Dignity in Rwanda. Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness. 39 (1): 83-95. Special Issue on “Aging, Care, and Chronicity,” edited by Narelle Warren and Dikaios Sakellariou.

2019      Sadruddin, Aalyia, Liliana A. Pontuga, Anna L. Zonderman, Kyle S. Wiley, and Catherine Panter-Brick. How do Grandparents Influence Child Health and Development? A Systematic Review. Social Science & Medicine. 239: 1-33.

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

in press  Sadruddin, Aalyia. ‘Giving Oneself Time’: Marriage and Motherhood in Urban Rwanda. In Waithood: Gender, Education, and Global Delays in Marriage edited by Marcia C. Inhorn and Nancy J. Smith-Hefner. New York:   Berghahn Books.