Faculty Scholar

Mimi Nichter, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology
University of Arizona at Tucson
Emil Haury Bldg. # 30, Room 210
P.O.Box 210030
1009 E. South Campus Drive
Tucson, AR 85721-0030
Phone: 520-626-9067
Fax: 520-621-2088
Email: MimiN@u.arizona.edu

Mimi Nichter, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona where she holds joint appointments in the College of Public Health and in the Department of Family Studies and Human Development.  Dr. Nichter has conducted longitudinal research on body image and dieting among adolescent girls, smoking as a weight control strategy during adolescence, and tobacco use among college students. Her long term fieldwork is in South and Southeast Asia where she has studied a range of issues with a particular focus on women and health.

Dr. Nichter was a Faculty Scholar with the Tobacco Etiology Research Network (TERN), funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In addition to research, she has worked in the development of prevention and intervention programs both nationally and internationally. She has designed school-based programs for improving girls’ body image, and has developed, implemented, and evaluated school-based tobacco prevention and cessation initiatives. Dr. Nichter has conducted research on the marketing of tobacco to women in Asia and on changing patterns of tobacco use among youth in India. She is a co-principal investigator on a Fogarty grant aimed at developing culturally appropriate tobacco cessation in India and Indonesia. She has also served as a co-PI on Project Reach, a NCI-funded project to develop tobacco cessation training programs for lay health interveners. Dr. Nichter has worked as a consultant on women and health issues for international health organizations including WHO, USAID, UNICEF, and the Ford Foundation.

She is the author of numerous journal articles and has written two books: Fat Talk: What Girls and their Parents Say about Dieting (Harvard University Press, 2000) and Anthropology and International Health: Asian Case Studies (1996, with Mark Nichter). In 2002, she was awarded the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association for her book, Fat Talk. She is a recipient of a Udall Public Policy Fellowship for 2007, with a focus on developing anti-smoking legislation on college campuses in Arizona.