She is Distinguished Professor at the University of California San Diego,[1] on faculty in the Departments of Anthropology, Psychiatry, and the Global Health Program.
Her research explores how cultural processes and structural institutions shape the experience, course, and outcome of mental health and illness.
She joined the faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University,[7] and served as Director of the Women's Studies Program.
Jenkins has worked with interdisciplinary research teams that have employed ethnographic and psychiatric methods of interviewing, observation, and assessment.
Jenkins’ research teams have found that the social and cultural environment of a person living with a mental illness can also shape the societal stigma and discrimination commonly associated with such conditions and treatments such as experiences with antipsychotic medication.
These studies have identified several culturally specific bodily transactions of emotions, such as the experience of el calor (intense heat) among Salvadoran refugees and nervios among Mexican-American populations.
Jenkins works to promote interdisciplinary research and intervention for global mental health on a broad scale for all worldwide.