John M. Janzen

John M. Janzen has been a leading figure on issues of health, illness, and healing in Southern and Central Africa since the 1960s and has dedicated much of his career to providing a better understanding of African society. Janzen’s knowledge of the Kikongo language and his intermittent visits to the lower Congo region between 1964 and 1982 have paved the way for a contextual understanding of the roots of Western Equatorial African approaches to sickness and healing, combining African and Western derived biomedical therapies. While his fieldwork in the lower Congo region has been very important in shaping him as an anthropologist, Janzen’s research has expanded to include other African countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Sudan, among many others. His work over the years has provided society as a whole with a comprehensive and holistic approach to health and healing, and has led to award winning publications, which have gained international attention. Along with his research on African society, Janzen has been conducting research on Mennonite society and culture, and is an active member of the Kansas Mennonite community. Besides being a native speaker of English, Dr. John M. Janzen is also fluent in Kikongo, standard High German, and Plautdietsch of the Vistula delta region, French, and some Arabic. He is the former director of the Kansas African Studies Center at the University of Kansas, and is currently a professor of medical and socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Kansas. He continues to carry out research on African health and healing, as well as on Mennonite society to the present.