Frank Kressing, born in Goettingen, Germany in 1959, completed his studies in cultural anthropology, folklore, European ethnography and comparative linguistics at Eberhard Karls University, Tuebingen in 1986. His master’s thesis focused on traditional social organization and land rights of the Hopi Nation in Arizona, U.S. After working in the fields of youth education (Deutsche Wanderjugend), ecology and human rights for Indigenous peoples (World Uranium Hearing, Salzburg, Austria 1992), he joined the Department of Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology at Ulm University in 1993. In 1995, he graduated in Human Biology, submitting a study on traditional and Western‐style health care facilities in rural Bolivia as his doctor’s thesis. Dr. Kressing’s ethnographic fieldwork included the Canadian subarctic (Lubicon Cree), the North American south‐west, the Balkans (Albania) and northwest India (Ladakh). Presently, he is working on global health issues and transcultural transfer in the spheres of Western and Greco‐Islamic medicine.

Fields of interest:

Medical Anthropology, Global Health, History of Medicine, Evolutionry Epistemology, Transcultural
Transfer in Medicine and beyond.

Most important publications:

1. Aspects of migration, culture and health care in Germany’s past and present. In: Florian Steger, Marcin Orzechowski, Giovanni Rubeis, Maximilian Schochow (Eds.): Migration and Medicine. Freiburg, München 2020, pp. 197–216. Co‐author: Maximilian Schochow.

2. International diversity in healthcare – a critical review of the importance and treatment of global health issues. In: Florian Steger (Ed.): Diversität im Gesundheitswesen. Freiburg, München 2019, pp. 109–127.

3. Cultural competence and global health: perspectives for medical education – position paper of the GMA committee on cultural competence and global health. In: GMS Journal for Medical Education 3 (2018). Doc28 (20180815). Co‐authors: Claudia Mews, Sylvie Schuster, Christian Vajda, Heide Lindtner‐Rudolph, Luise E. Schmidt, Stefan Bösner, Leyla Güzelsoy, Houda Hallal, Tim Peters, Margarita Gestmann, Linn Hempel, Tatjana Grützmann, Erika Sievers, Michael Knipper.

4. Lateral and vertical transfer in biology, linguistics and anthropology: An account of widely
neglected ideas in the formation of evolutionary theory. In: Evolutionary Biology 43 (2016), pp.
474–480. DOI 10.1007/s11692‐015‐9330‐y.

5. Development and degeneration: Classification and evolution of human populations and
languages in the history of anthropology. In: Larissa M. Straffon (ed.): Cultural Phylogenetics.
Concepts and Applications in Archaeology. Dordrecht, Berlin, Heidelberg 2016. pp. 19–41. Coauthor: Matthis Krischel.

6. Migration and health in medical education. A work in progress report from central Europe. In:
Journal of Health and Culture 1 (2016), pp. 36–44.

7. Possible preventive aspects of shamanism – An example from Ladakh, northwest India. In:
Curare – Journal of Medical Anthropology 38 (2016), pp. 213–223.

8. The “global phylogeny" and its historical legacy. A critical review of a unified theory of human
biological and linguistic co‐evolution. In: Medicine Studies – An International Journal for History,
Philosophy, and Ethics of Medicine and Allied Sciences 4 (2014), pp. 15–27. Co‐authors: Heiner
Fangerau, Matthis Krischel.

9. Contested medical identities ‐ migration of health care providers and Middle Eastern students at Western universities. In: İlhan İlkılıç, Hakan Ertin, Rainer Brömer, Hajo Zeeb (Eds.): Health, Culture and the Human Body. Epidemiology, Ethics and History of Medicine. Perspectives from Turkey and Central Europe. İstanbul 2014, pp. 113–124.

10. Mapping human biological and linguistic diversity – a bridge between sciences and humanities.
In: Heiner Fangerau, Hans Geisler, Thorsten Halling, William F. Martin (Eds.): Classification and
Evolution in Biology, Linguistics and the History of Science. Concepts – Methods – Visualization.
Stuttgart 2013, pp. 97–108.

11. Screening indigenous peoples’ genes – the end of racism or postmodern bio‐imperialism? In:
Sandrine Berthier, Susanna Tolazzi, Sheila Whittick (Eds.): Biomapping or Biocolonizing?
Indigenous Identities and Scientific Research in the 21st Century. Amsterdam, New York 2012,
pp. 117–136.

12. The specific situation of religion in Albania and the Albanian Bektashis – an example for crossing religious and political boundaries. In Božidar Jezernik, Raiko Muršič, Alenka Bartulić (Eds.): Europe and its Other. Notes on the Balkans. Ljubljana 2007, pp. 149–168.

13. The increase of shamans in contemporary Ladakh. In: Asian Folklore Studies 62 (2003), pp. 1–23.

14. Frank Kressing, Karl Kaser (Eds.): Albania ‐ A Country in Transition. Aspects of Changing Identities in a South‐East European Country. Baden‐Baden 2002.

15. General remarks on Albania and the Albanians. In: Frank Kressing, Karl Kaser (Eds.): Albania ‐ A Country in Transition. Aspects of Changing Identities in a South‐East European Country. Baden‐Baden 2002, pp. 11–25.

16. A preliminary account of research regarding the Albanian Bektashis ‐ myths and unresolved questions. In: Karl Kaser, Frank Kressing (Eds.): Albania ‐ A Country in Transition. Aspects of Changing Identities in a South‐East European Country. Baden‐Baden 2002, pp. 65–92.

17. Candidates for a theory of shamanism. A systematic survey concerning recent research results from Eurasia and Native America. In: Shaman 5 (1997), S. 115–141.

18. La medicina occidental en la región kallawaya, Bolivia. Ulm 1997.

19. Uranium Mining, Atomic Bomb Testing and Nuclear Waste Storage on Native Lands ‐ A Global Survey. Munich 1992. Co‐author: Esther Krumbholz.