Dr Mike Poltorak’s journey in social anthropology started with long-term ethnographic fieldwork on mental illness and spirit possession in the South Pacific island group of Tonga from 1998-2000. An apprenticeship to a local healer provided unique insights into how mental illness is experienced in the community before it is brought to the attention of medical services. Working with the only Tongan psychiatrist enabled Mike to track patients between systems, and to evaluate the efficacy of treatment, and the effects of diagnoses of mental illness or spirit involvement. A similar concern with epistemological dialogue led to policy-engaged research on resistance to vaccination in the UK and India. This prompted his wider interest in bringing anthropological insights to issues of public and policy concern.
In publications, Mike has attempted an ethnographically grounded form of brokerage across disciplinary boundaries on issues of contemporary concern. He has written on the need for interdisciplinarity in addressing rising rates of mental illness in Tonga, and advocated for greater understanding of the role and situations of traditional healers. As research fellow, he researched parental engagement with the MMR vaccination in Brighton and Hove (Sussex/IDS, 2003-2004), part of a project aimed at generating comparative insights into science–society relations in the context of current crises in vaccination research and delivery regimes in the UK and West Africa. The resulting widely cited publication gave an ethnographically grounded explanation for the wider contexts of resistance to the MMR vaccination that addressed popular media misrepresentations of misinformed or ignorant parents. Teaching and research positions at Sussex, Brunel, Manchester, UCL and Oxford Universities have allowed Mike to experiment with the use of multimedia to communicate anthropological ideas and to engage with multiple audiences.
Mike’s first documentary was produced collaboratively with the Tongan comedian Tevita Koloamatangi and completed in 2010. ‘Fun(d)raising: The Secret of Tongan Comedy’ is an intervention into the cultural politics of representation of Tonga and Tongans, through looking at the motivations of comedians and the focus of their comedy. The film is often screened on Tongan television. Its origins lie in a desire for epistemologically and ethnographically led film-making. Mike has developed these principles in relation to volunteerism in the Swedish intentional community of Angsbacka and in relation to the dance and movement form of contact improvisation. For Mike, participatory and collaborative research and media production, crossing and linking the concerns of social, medical and visual anthropology, offer an ideal launching point for a vibrant and grounded public and engaged anthropology. He welcomes students and collaboration in this vein.
Tonga; Oceania; New Zealand; Brighton and Hove; Rajasthan, India; visual anthropology; mental illness; medical anthropology; transnationalism; ethnopsychiatry; vaccination; applied medical anthropology; cultural politics; indigenous epistemologies and modernities; dance; contact improvisation.
Research history
Mike’s doctoral research (UCL, 1996-2002) focused on local ‘spirit’ healers’ engagement with psychiatric modernisation in the South Pacific constitutional monarchy of Tonga. Detailed case studies – experienced over eighteen months of fieldwork with healers and health professionals – were central to his examination of the local diversity of healing practice, the association of ideas of tevolo (‘spirits’) and agency, culture-bound disorders, and the linguistic grounding of claims of efficacy and stigmatisation surrounding mental illness. Strategies to bridge the epistemological divide between the framing of health policy and the insights of ethnography have involved the rendering of indigenous concepts as analytic tools, engagement with local literatures (eg Pacific Studies), the use of video as research tool, experimental writing strategies, problematising translation, ethnographically led surveys, and the development of case-based presentation strategies for health professionals.
Postdoctoral research (Brunel University, 2004-2005) on Tongan mental illness in New Zealand and Tonga with policymakers, academics and practitioners sought an epistemological middle ground on the question of stigmatisation. Research on the institutional contexts for poor vaccination uptake in Rajasthan, India (Said Business School, Oxford University, 2007-2008) has prompted an interest in applied medical anthropology and engagement in health policy, local health workers, NGO-led interventions, social mobilisation and wider debates in cultural politics and indigenous modernities.
Mike found his pedagogical vocation in visual anthropology, a specialism he enthusiastically embraces to integrate his research and teaching with a passion for an integrative, publicly and policy-engaged anthropology. He inspires students to use video to better understand their relationship to the contemporary world and to have an impact on issues that mean something to them.
Collaborative working and peer-teaching, rooted in the literature of phenomenological anthropology, are central to Mike’s teaching, both as method and as a way into the subject matter. His interactive lectures and drama-based activities maximise creativity and discussion of the potential of a ‘shared anthropology’. He has organised public screenings and film events to inspire students and build their capacity to appreciate how media is received. The Film and Advocacy series in 2011 and 2012 encouraged discussion across the boundaries of anthropology, activism and film-making. In sharing his practice at Kent, nationally and internationally, he strives to enable students to move and experience being creative and self-aware teachers.
In 2014 Mike gained the 'Best Teacher' award organised by Kent Union. You can see the video of his acceptance speech here.
Mike is particularly interested in supervising students in the important synthesis across the boundaries of social, medical and visual anthropology.