Dr. Alana Helberg-Proctor is an interdisciplinary social scientist and Assistant Professor in the Health, Care and the Body programme group at the UvA Department of Anthropology. In her work, she focuses on diversity and (in)equality in contemporary and historical healthcare and medical science. She investigates how 'race' and 'ethnicity' appear in biomedical research, health policy, and healthcare in the Netherlands and Europe. More specifically, she explores how scientific and technological practices in care and medicine are intertwined with society, politics, cultural values, and historical post-colonial context.

Alana started her interdisciplinary academic career and education at The New School in New York City, where she obtained her BA (Liberal Arts) and MA (Global Political Economy). Upon completing her MSc in Public Health and Ph.D. at Maastricht University in 2017, she was appointed as an Assistant Professor at Maastricht University in the Department of Health, Ethics, and Society. In addition, she was a post-doc in the UvA RaceFaceID project and guest lecturer at the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences. In 2021 she was awarded the Marie Curie Sklodowska Fellowship research grant, with which she was a post-doc in the Life Sciences & Society Lab at KU Leuven's Sociology Department in Belgium (Sep 2021-Dec. 2022). Alana joined the UvA Department of Anthropology in her current role in 2023. In 2024 Alana won a tender from the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) to explore the present-day impact of the Trans-Atlantic colonial history and slavery on the health of descendants of those who were enslaved and the Dutch healthcare system. Alana serves as PI for this project. Alana is also part of the KMK consortium, which in July 2025 won a tender from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) worth 1.1 million euros to research the colonial history of the KNAW.

Expertise and research fields

• Science and Technology Studies

• Critical Race and Ethnicity Studies 

• Anthropology of Medicine

• Postcolonial Science Studies

• Global Health

• Trans-Atlantic colonial history and slavery