Biography
Dr Mikkel Kenni Bruun is a social anthropologist whose work examines the intersections of public health, digital technology, and evidence-based practices. He has conducted long-term ethnographic research on various aspects of mental healthcare in the UK, with a particular focus on the provision of psychological healthcare in the NHS, community-based mental health initiatives, and the digitalisation of psychotherapy.
Dr Bruun is a Research Associate at The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute in the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at Cambridge University.
He earned his PhD in Social Anthropology (2019) at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and holds an MRes in Medical Anthropology from University College London (2014). At Cambridge, he currently teaches across several courses, including ethnographic methods, medical anthropology, gender studies, and anthropological theory.
He is also an affiliated researcher at King’s College London, where he has contributed to an ERC-funded project (2021–2024) investigating contemporary forms of surveillance in Germany and Britain. His most recent research explores practices of health monitoring in the UK based on fieldwork with users of self-tracking wearables and apps designed to promote fitness and wellbeing.
His earlier research examined professional practices within the NHS Talking Therapies (formerly IAPT) and community mental health services in London, which included a study of how evidence-based psychological therapy is enacted and experienced across educational, clinical, and everyday contexts of care.
Dr Bruun’s work consistently engages with critical questions in the anthropology of science, medical anthropology, and mental health research, with a strong commitment to advancing anthropology’s contribution to healthcare improvement.
He is the co-editor of Towards an Anthropology of Psychology: Ethnographic Studies of Psychological Healthcare (Berghahn Books, 2025) and Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time (Bristol University Press, 2025).
Affiliations:
Research
Medical anthropology and anthropology of science; mental health and selfhood; surveillance, monitoring and accountability; evidence-based healthcare and NHS Talking Therapies/IAPT; history of psychology; anthropological theory. Europe; UK and Scandinavia.
Publications
Books:
2025. Towards an Anthropology of Psychology: Ethnographic Studies of Psychological Healthcare (ed., with R. Hutten). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
2025. Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time (ed., with V. Peacock, C. Dungey and M. Shapiro). Bristol: Bristol University Press.
Articles and Book Chapters:
2025. Throwing Out the Psyche: Scientific Persuasions in British Psychotherapy. In Towards an Anthropology of Psychology (eds) M.K. Bruun and R. Hutten. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
2025. Introduction: Thinking Ethnographically about Psychology. In Towards an Anthropology of Psychology (eds) M.K. Bruun and R. Hutten. New York and Oxford: Berghahn.
2025. Watching Our Selves. In Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time (eds) V. Peacock, M.K. Bruun, C. Dungey and M. Shapiro. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
2023. Mental Health. The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
2023. ‘A Factory of Therapy’: Accountability and the Monitoring of Psychological Therapy in IAPT. Anthropology and Medicine 30 (4): 313-329.
2023. Surveillance (with V. Peacock, C. Dungey and M. Shapiro). The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology.
Other Publications and Media:
2025. Under Surveillance Ep.12 with Vita Peacock, Mikkel Kenni Bruun and Claire Elisabeth Dungey. Podcast by ANSUR (The Anthropology of Surveillance Network).
2024. On the unintended effects of ‘evidence-based’ practice in NHS Talking Therapies. In Impact in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Applied Health Research Centre, King's College London.
2022. ‘Anthropological reflections on digital self-monitoring in Britain’. The Digital Humanities Lecture Series: On Surveillance. King's College London.
2021. Anthropology, Psychology and IAPT: Some Comments on Ethnography. Talking as Cure? Contemporary Understandings of Mental Health and Its Treatments. CRASSH, University of Cambridge.
2021. Healthcare systems and the delivery of psychotherapy. The Talking Cure Podcast.
2020. ‘Selfhood in-the-making: fashioning the self in mental health care and in social anthropology’. MaxCam, University of Cambridge.
2014. ‘Finding a language of analysis: the problem of “embodiment” in the study of psychotherapy’. Risk, Embodiment and Health Technologies. University College London.
Teaching and Supervisions
Undergraduate Supervision:
SAN2: Ethnographic Methods and Writing
SAN4: Anthropological Theory and Methods
SAN9: Science and Environment
SAN13: Gender, Kinship and Care
SAN17: Engaged Anthropology: Policy, Practice and Institutions
Social Anthropology Undergraduate Dissertations
Postgraduate Research Supervision
Health, Medicine & Society MPhil Medical Anthropology Dissertations
Multi-disciplinary Gender Studies MPhil Dissertations
