Molly Fitzpatrick is a lecturer in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. In her research, she explores the affective, political, and moral negotiations of care relations within the context of maternal healthcare, parenting, (alternative) education, and elderly care. Molly Fitzpatrick coordinates the LDE Minor Future Challenges Lab: Co-creating Sustainable Practices in and beyond the Indonesian City.

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Molly Fitzpatrick conducts research on care relations within the context of maternal healthcare, parenting, (alternative) education, and elderly care. She is particularly interested in the affective labour of care, and the relationship between care and morality. She has conducted ethnographic research in Indonesia, India, South Africa, and the Netherlands.

Her PhD dissertation, which won the prize of best dissertation from the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Zurich 2023, explored how ideas of the natural are shaped and made politically and morally significant in the context of two maternal healthcare clinics in Bali, Indonesia. She is currently reworking her dissertation into a book, tentatively titled: ‘Moral Becomings: The Politics of Care in Natural Birth Clinics in Bali’.

As principal investigator in a collaborative project on alternative education in Indonesia, Molly Fitzpatrick led an international team of researchers and students from the University of Zurich and Universitas Gadjah Mada. This project resulted in a special issue published in the peer-reviewed journal Humaniora, entitled Cultivating Futures: Anthropological Explorations of Alternative Education in Indonesia (2025) and co-edited with Annisa Sabrina Hartoto. She has also published in medical anthropology journals such as Medicine Anthropology Theory and Curare, and has written a chapter for the edited volume The Battle over Birth.

Molly Fitzpatrick is the coordinator of the LDE selection minor Future Challenges Lab: Co-creating Sustainable Practices in and beyond the Indonesian City.