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Kenni Bruun

Research Associate

Kenni Bruun is a medical anthropologist and Research Associate at THIS Institute. His work combines ethnographic methods with anthropological theory to examine the challenges facing healthcare professionals.

Kenni holds a BA, MA and PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and an MRes in Medical Anthropology from University College London.

His doctoral research, funded by the ESRC, investigated evidence-based psychological healthcare in NHS Talking Therapies (formerly IAPT) and community mental health services, which included a study of practitioners’ experiences of working within specific regulatory and biomedical frameworks of assessment and care.

Kenni has taught and supervised across a range of courses at Cambridge since 2019, including medical anthropology, gender studies, and ethnographic methods.

Prior to joining THIS Institute, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College London, where he worked on the ERC-funded project Surveillance and Moral Community: Anthropologies of Monitoring in Germany and Britain. His research explored how people use digital health monitoring technologies, such as smartwatches and apps, to improve physical and mental health.

Research Interests

Kenni has conducted anthropological research on mental healthcare in the UK since 2012, with a particular focus on the provision of psychotherapeutic care within NHS and community settings. At THIS Institute, his research applies ethnographic approaches to improve our understandings of the everyday challenges that healthcare professionals experience in their workplace, including issues of access, inequity, and accountability. Kenni’s work engages with critical questions in studies of care provision, evidence-based practice, and health monitoring, with a strong commitment to advancing anthropology’s contribution to healthcare improvement.

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