Welcome to the Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity
We are an interdisciplinary research unit based at the University of Oxford, dedicated to understanding the complex and interwoven causes of obesity in populations across the world.
Happy Eaters (Tim Head, painting, 1989), investigates obesogenic environments.
Image reproduced with permission from the artist.
Our aim
Obesity rates have increased dramatically worldwide. Given the magnitude of the problem in both developed and developing countries, it is of utmost importance that academic work focus on the various dimensions of the pandemic. Despite strong work in public health, psychology, and anthropology, there remains a knowledge gap concerning social and cultural aspects of the emergence of obesity among many of the world's populations. Interdisciplinary research between the social and medical sciences is necessary.
The Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity (UBVO) at the University of Oxford addresses this issue by bringing together scholars of different disciplines to identify and carry out multidisciplinary studies in this area, and of the socio-cultural correlates and drivers of obesity in particular. Discipline areas involved in collaboration at Oxford include anthropology, public health, cancer epidemiology, politics and international relations, business studies, economic history, and sociology.
Research issues include examination of constructs of body size and embodiment, biological and social life histories, consumption and affluence, corporate and social marketing, evolutionary adaptedness of psychological ambivalence, and corporate culture and social responsibility. Instruments for collaborative research under examination include ethnographies and narrative analysis, cultural consensus modeling, evolutionary life history theory, political economics, history and human biology, and epidemiology of diet and lifestyle.
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