John M. Janzen is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. He has been a leading figure on issues of health, illness, and healing in Southern and Central Africa since the 1960s and has dedicated much of his career to providing a better understanding of African society. Janzen’s knowledge of the Kikongo language and his intermittent visits to the lower Congo region between 1964 and 2013 have paved the way for a contextual understanding of the roots of Western Equatorial African approaches to sickness and healing, combining African and Western derived biomedical therapies. Janzen’s research has expanded to include other African countries such as Rwanda, Burundi, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Sudan. He is the former director of the Kansas African Studies Center at the University of Kansas. . Biography John M. Janzen was born to Hilda Gertrude Neufeldt and Louis Abraham Janzen on October 28, 1937 in Newton, Kansas. He is the second of four children, and one of three boys in his family. He is married to Reinhild Kauenhoven and has three children. Upon high school graduation from Berean Academy, he attended Bethel College for four years. Here he met his future wife, Reinhild Kauenhoven, a then student-colleague from Göttingen, Germany. After his second year in school, Janzen joined the PAX program of the Mennonite Central Committee that took him to Africa for two years of service in lieu of joining the U.S. military. During this time, Janzen worked on projects involving education, and helped in the construction of a hospital in the late colonial setting of the South Savannah of Belgian Congo. It was during this time that Janzen became interested in learning more about Africa. Returning home, Janzen pursued a graduate degree in anthropology. He graduated from Bethel College in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in Social Science and Philosophy, and was accepted to the University of Chicago as a graduate student in anthropology. After a first year taking the core courses in anthropology at Chicago, Janzen benefited from a French Government grant to attend the University of Paris (Sorbonne), from which he received a certificate of African Studies in 1963. Fearing that Central Africa would be closed to field research because of political unrest, Janzen shifted his focus to North Africa and the Middle East, and to a course program in Arabic and Islamic Culture with Mushin Madhi