Ciara Kierans appointed Professor of Anthropology
The Irish anthropologist Ciara Kierans has been appointed professor of anthropology at Aarhus University, effective 1 November 2025. She conducts research at the intersection of health and the environment – with a particular focus on pollution, river basins and planetary health.
The Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University has a new professor. Through fieldwork in western and central Mexico, Ciara Kierans has developed a special interest in filtration processes – understood as biological, ecological and social mechanisms in the interactions between mediating humans, the environment, and disease.
This interest also forms the basis for her new research project FILTERSCAPE – Filtering Futures: contaminant flows, landscape governance and the making of new anthropological knowledge for planetary health, which has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) as an Advanced Grant. The project will begin on 1 December 2025 and will investigate how environmental changes and pollution affect humans, animals and ecosystems.
"My professorship will develop research and knowledge at the intersections between health and the environment, and FILTERSCAPE will play a central role in this work," says Ciara Kierans.
Pollution and health in a global perspective
FILTERSCAPE deals with pollution in river basins – landscapes that are under increasing pressure from agriculture, industry, urban development, climate change and flooding. These interwoven forces have far-reaching implications for the health of humans, animals, ecosystems, and communities.
The project will result in a comparative study of Denmark and Mexico, two countries with very different – but urgent – challenges related to the aquatic environment. Kierans and her research team will work through interdisciplinary collaboration and in close dialogue with researchers, decision-makers and practitioners in the environmental and health fields. The goal is to create knowledge that can contribute to sustainable management and improved health for both people and the planet.
"I entered this field of research through academic, social, and personal interests in health, environmental harm, social justice, and inequality," she says. "My work in Mexico with kidney disease conditioned by environmental pollution inspired me to think more broadly about filtration processes – from the body's own filters to the environmental and technological systems that are also under pressure," she says.
Ciara Kierans is Irish and comes from a position as Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Liverpool. She has a Ph.D. from Maynooth University and has conducted research at Harvard University as a Fulbright Fellow. She has also been a PIREU Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, where she further developed her work on the interwoven social and environmental causes of chronic kidney disease in the Mexican Lerma–Chapala catchment area.
The time and place of Ciara Kierans' inaugural lecture will be announced later.
Contact
Ciara Kierans, Professor
Department of Anthropology
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Mail: ciarakierans@cas.au.dk