Mark Padilla

Mark Padilla is a medical anthropologist with cross-training and programmatic experience in global health in Latin America and the Caribbean. Since 1996 he has conducted mixed-method ethnographic research in the Dominican Republic, focusing on the social effects of demographic and political-economic changes on sexuality among young men.

His award-winning book, Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic (University of Chicago Press, 2007), examines the influence of the tourist industry on Dominican men’s sexuality, their sexual practices / identities, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Caribbean. More recently, he has conducted projects on gay and bisexual long-term survivors of HIV/AIDS in New York City; transgendered sex workers in the eastern Dominican Republic; and the structural context of homelessness and youth sexual vulnerability in Detroit, Michigan. He teaches courses on medical anthropology, global health, and qualitative methods in Public Health.