2024 Commencement Speaker
Dr. Jeffery Deal
Author of four novels and an anthropology book on South Sudan, Dr. Jeffery Deal recently retired from his position as Director of Health Studies for Water Missions International and is now a Senior Fellow of Public Health and an adjunct professor of anthropology for the College of Charleston.
He is a member of the London International Development Centre, a Fellow in the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons. He holds Board Certification in Tropical Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians and Otolaryngology-- Head and Neck Surgery in the US. He is also a member of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. A Land At the Centre of the World (Markoulakis Publications), his ethnography of the Dinka Agaar of South Sudan is now in its second edition. In addition to writing fiction, his previous publications span the fields of microbiology, anthropology, and surgery. His patented robot, Tru-D, is being used around the world and in the US to reduce hospital acquired infections. When not working in the field, he lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife of thirty-nine years.