Charles Leslie Briggs is an anthropologist who works at the University of California, Berkeley, United States.
His initial research focus centered on the "Mexicano" population of his home state of New Mexico in the US, analyzing how folklore, oral history, and wood carving articulated resistance to racism and land expropriation.
Focusing his attention on indigenous people in Venezuela, he then documented--in collaboration with Clara Mantini-Briggs MD MPH--how medical profiling increased the lethality and long-term consequences of outbreaks of cholera and bat-transmitted rabies.
His recent work decolonizes understandings of health and medicine, language and communication by rethinking relations between linguistic and medical anthropology.
He is currently researching the effect of the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing how racialized approaches to health communication intersected with lay participation in knowledge production and care in producing profound social divides.
The Wood Carvers of Córdova, New Mexico: Social Dimensions of an Artistic "Revival."
The Lost Gold Mine of Juan Mondragón: A Legend of New Mexico Performed by Melaquías Romero.
(by Charles L. Briggs with Clara Mantini-Briggs; Spanish, expanded edition, Nueva Sociedad, 2004).
Making Health Public: How News Coverage Is Remaking Media, Medicine, and Contemporary Life.
He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, the School for Advanced Research, and the Georg-August University of Göttingen.