The Office of the Dean of the School of Foreign Service, the Asian Studies Department, and the Mortara Center for International Studies welcome Dr. Cecilia Van Hollen, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Syracuse University, for a presentation entitled 'Birth in the Age of AIDS: Women, Reproduction, and HIV/AIDS in India.' The lecture is a part of the year-long Global India Lecture Series.

Dr. Van Hollen is the Director of the National Resource Center for South Asian Studies in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University. She is also a Trustee of the American Institute for India Studies and of the South Asia Language Institute. her research has examined the impact of HIV/AIDS on the experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in India based on ethnographic research conducted between 2003 and 2008. She focuses on the local responses to the global health program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV and demonstrates that although the program being implemented in India is an effective public health intervention in terms of reducing transmission rates, it has often had negative social consequences on the lives of low-income women who test HIV-positive during pregnancy.