Johanna Richlin

Research Interests

Affect, emotion and subjectivity; Religion and society; Migration; Medical and psychological anthropology; U.S. and Brazil.

Dr. Richlin specializes in the anthropology of religion and psychological and medical anthropology, with expertise in evangelical Christianity in the U.S. and Brazil, U.S. migration, studies of affect and emotion, and gender, health and society.

Her first research project explored the impact of U.S. migration experience on the varied religious beliefs, choices, and sentiments of Brazilian migrants in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region. From this body of research, she published a research article in Current Anthropology, entitled “The Affective Therapeutics of Migrant Faith: Evangelical Christianity among Brazilians in Greater Washington, D.C” (2019), and completed her first book, In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience In the United States (Princeton University Press, 2022). Richlin’s research was reviewed in The Economist (“Religion and Vulnerability: Why Charismatic Christianity is Popular with Migrants” (2019)) and featured on The Chris Voss Show (2022).

Richlin’s current research investigates U.S. healthcare experience and vaccine beliefs, behaviors, and solidarities among diverse demographics. She has published two articles related to this project, including “From Iatrogenesis to Vaccine Skepticism: U.S. Mothers’ Negative Vaccine Perceptions and Non-vaccination Practices as Reverberations of Medical Harm,” (Medical Anthropology Quarterly 2023) and “Covid-19 and Evangelical Christianity: Growing Distrust and Faith among While Rural Americans” (Journal of the Anthropology of North America 2025). Richlin’s research was also the subject of a short-form essay for The Conversation and an interview on Slate’s podcast “Hear Me Out.”