Amy Hinterberger, PhD

Biography

Amy Hinterberger is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Bioethics and Humanities in the School of Medicine at the University of Washington. She is a sociologist whose work explores the ethical and political dimensions of biomedicine and biotechnology.

Before joining UW in 2024, she held academic positions in the UK and US, including at King’s College London, the University of Warwick, Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and the University of London. She received her PhD in Sociology from the London School of Economics in 2010.

She also holds affiliated appointments as an External Faculty Associate at the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia, and as Visiting Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London.

Research

Amy’s research examines how emerging biotechnologies—such as organoids, stem cells, and chimeric organisms—reshape ethical norms and regulatory practices.

She leads the Wellcome Trust-funded project Biomedical Research and the Politics of the Human, a multi-sited ethnographic and qualitative study of stem cell and organoid research. The project examines how scientists and policymakers navigate tensions between innovation, reproducibility, and the push for more human-representative disease models. Her research investigates how tools like organoids and chimeras are reshaping standards of evidence in biomedical science, with implications for clinical research, animal research, public trust, and health equity.

Working at the intersection of sociology, bioethics, and science and technology studies, she analyzes how emerging biotechnologies are integrated into medical research and how experimental systems can support more responsible and ethically grounded forms of scientific innovation.

Learn more: www.politicsofthehuman.org

Academic Title:

Associate Professor and Chair

Department Roles:

Chair

A204H

politicsofthehuman.org

Research

Selected Publications

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Hinterberger, A. 2025. Inclusion and diversity in organoid research. Nat Reviews Bioengineering https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-025-00296-4

Bea, S. and Hinterberger, A., 2025. From Cells to Organoids: Sociological Considerations for the Bioengineering of Human Models. Sociology of Health & Illness, 47(2), p.e13862.

Hinterberger, A, and Bea, S. 2023 ‘How do scientists model humanness? A qualitative study of human organoids in biomedical research’ Social Science & Medicine, Volume 320: 115676.

Hinterberger, A. 2022 ‘Composite Animals: Then and Now’ Hastings Center Report, 52(6): 1-5.

Johnston J, Hyun I, Neuhaus C.P.., Maschke K.J., Marshall P, Craig K.P, Matthews M.M, Drolet K, Greely H.T, Hill L.R, Hinterberger A, et al. 2022 ‘Clarifying the Ethics and Oversight of Chimeric Research’ Hastings Center Report, 52(6): 1-23.

Fitzgerald D, Hinterberger A, Narayan J, Williams R. 2020. ‘Brexit as heredity redux: Imperialism, biomedicine and the NHS in Britain’. The Sociological Review. 68 (6):1161-1178.

Hinterberger, A. 2018. ‘Marked “h” for Human: Chimeric Life and the Politics of the Human’. BioSocieties, 13(2): 453-469.

Hinterberger A. 2016. ‘Regulating Estrangement: Human–Animal Chimeras in Postgenomic Biology’. Science, Technology, & Human Values. 45(6):1065-1086.

Davies, G.F. et al. 2016. ‘Developing a Collaborative Agenda for Humanities and Social Scientific Research on Laboratory Animal Science and Welfare.’ PLoS ONE 11(7):e0158791.

Hinterberger, A and Porter, N. 2015. ‘Genomic and Viral Sovereignty: Tethering the Materials of Global Biomedicine’ Public Culture, 27(2): 361-386.

Hinterberger, A. 2012. ‘Investing in Life, Investing in Difference: Nations, Populations and Genomes’. Theory, Culture and Society, 29(3): 72–93.

Hinterberger, A. 2012. ‘Publics and Populations: The Politics of Ancestry and Exchange in Genome Science’. Science as Culture, 21(4): 528-549.

Hinterberger, A 2007. ‘Feminist Theory and the Politics of Representation: Towards a Critical and Ethical Encounter with “others”’ Journal of International Women’s Studies, 8 (2): 74-83. [Reprinted in 2008 Feminism: Theories and Impact. Debashree Mukherje Ed. Kolkata: Icfai University Press, 105-118.]

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

Hinterberger, A. 2024. ‘The institutional life of animals’ Davies, G., Greenhough, B., Hobson-West, P. et al. (Eds.) Researching animal research: What the humanities and social sciences can contribute to laboratory animal science and welfare, Manchester University Press, 105 -122.

Hinterberger, A and Bea, S. 2021. ‘Cells, Animals and Human Subjects: Regulating Interspecies Biomedical Research’ Laurie, G., Dove, E., Ganguli-Mitra, A.,et al. (Eds.). The Cambridge Handbook of Health Research Regulation Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hinterberger, A. 2018. ‘Molecular Multicultures’. Handbook of Biology and Society, Eds. Meloni, M., Cromby, J., Fitzgerald, D., Lloyd, J. Palgrave Macmillan, 251-268.

Hinterberger, A. 2012. ‘Categorisation, Census and Multiculturalism: Molecular Politics and the Material of Nation’. Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision between DNA, Race, and History, Keith Wailoo, Alondra Nelson, & Catherine Lee Eds. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 204-224.

Hinterberger, A. 2012. ‘Agency’. Gender: The Key Concepts, Mary Evans and Caroline Williams, Eds. London: Routledge, 7-13.

Hinterberger, A. 2010. ‘The Genomics of Difference and the Politics of Race in Canada’. What's the Use of Race? Modern Governance and the Biology of Difference. Ian Whitmarsh and David S. Jones, Eds. Cambridge: MIT University Press, 147-186.

Review Essays and Commentaries in Peer-Reviewed Journals

Fitzgerald, D and Hinterberger, A. 2021 ‘Writing the Social Studies of Science’ European Science and Technology Review 40 (1): 4-7.

Hinterberger, A. 2014. Commentary on Major Article, ‘Nation and the Absent Presence of Race in Latin American Genomics’ by Peter Wade et al. Current Anthropology 55(5): 511-512.

Hinterberger, A. 2013. ‘Curating Postcolonial Critique’. Review Essay for The Postcolonial Science and Technology Studies Reader, Ed. Sandra Harding, London and Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Social Studies of Science 43: 619-627.

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Amy Hinterberger, PhD

Amy Hinterberger, PhD

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