Announcements

This January 2025, Society + Technology at UW is launching an online Salon Series. The first two conversations, taking place on January 13 and 14, will prominently feature scholars from UW’s STSS community at UW Tacoma, UW Bothell, UW Seattle, and the School of Medicine. These sessions will be intimate, emergent discussions about genetics and bioethics, drawing on concepts from STS.

S+T’s Salons are among the initiative’s Community Programs, which also include the First Monday STSS Reading Group. Salons are designed to recognize and honor live, arranged encounters as a meeting of the minds, to give greater visibility to the S+T network, and to cultivate intellectual conditions for deeper collaborations.

[1] S+T Salon | Online | Genetic Technologies, Technologies of Genetics

Mon, Jan. 13, 2025, 12:30 pm – 1:45 pm

Register for Monday, Jan. 13, 2025 Salon

Perspectives on technologies of genetics, including biostatistics, risk analysis, and more, from anthropological, cultural, and philosophical schools of thought.

Presenters:  Christian Anderson (IAS, UW Bothell), Lisa Hoffman (Urban Studies, UW Tacoma), Shannon Cram (IAS, UW Bothell), Malia Fullerton (Dept. of Bioethics & Humanities, School of Medicine), Sarah Nelson (Genetic Analysis Center, Dept. of Biostatistics, UW Seattle)

[2] S+T Salon | Online | Bioethics and Human Flourishing

Tue, Jan. 14, 2025, 2:30 pm – 3:45 pm 

Register for Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2025 Salon

Ethical, social, cultural, geographical, and critical perspectives on research and applications of genetics, neurotechnologies, precision medicine, and more.

Presenters: From the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the School of Medicine: Amy Hinterberger, Tim Brown, Sue Trinidad; and from the UW Tacoma School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences: Ilā Ravichandran

Speaker Bios

[1] Salon | Jan. 13, 2025 | Genetic Technologies, Technologies of Genetics

Christian Anderson (IAS, UW Bothell)

Christian Anderson is an Associate Professor at UW Bothell and an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersections of human geography, urban studies, cultural studies, science and technology studies, and critical social thought. In his previous work, his primary mode has been ethnographic. He is increasingly interested in practicing place-based collaborative methods—including oral histories, mapping and geo-visual techniques, and other qualitative approaches—within various contexts and structures of community-embedded collective study and knowledge production.

Across all of his work, Anderson’s abiding aim is to understand how ordinary people’s everyday lives, routine practices, relations, and taken-for-granted or “common sense” conceptions of the world interconnect with broader formations of culture, power, social reproduction, and political economy. Additionally, he seeks to experiment with conscientious place-based processes and protocols through which alternative conceptions, practices, relations, formations, and futures might emerge.

Shannon Cram (IAS, UW Bothell)

Shannon Cram is an Associate Professor at UW Bothell and an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersections of geography, anthropology, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. Her research explores what it means to reckon with an unevenly contaminated environment and how managing exposure shapes the very definitions of health and hazard in the United States. Her work investigates the embodied politics of waste and wasting, with particular attention to the co-production of science and social life. She analyzes how frames such as risk, reason, pollution, and protection recognize (and fail to recognize) environmental impacts. In examining how such forms of recognition have come to be, she also asks how they might be reimagined. This concern with how power circulates in and through situated histories of toxicity is central to her scholarship.

Malia Fullerton (Department of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine)

Stephanie Malia Fullerton, DPhil, is Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the UW Departments of Epidemiology, Genome Sciences, and Medicine (Medical Genetics), as well as an affiliate investigator with the Public Health Sciences division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She received a PhD in Human Population Genetics from the University of Oxford and later re-trained in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) research with a fellowship from the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute. She currently serves as Director of Research for the department.

Fullerton’s work focuses on the ethical and social implications of genomic research and its equitable and safe translation for clinical and public health benefit. She co-leads (with Sarah Nelson) ELSI research focused on data governance in the context of emerging cloud-based biomedical data storage and analysis platforms (R21 HG011501). She serves as a co-I with the Polygenic Risk Methods in Diverse Populations (PRIMED) Consortium coordinating center (U01 HG011697), and previously served as the ELSI PI for the Clinical Sequencing Evidence-Generating Research (CSER) coordinating center (U24 HG007307). She has prior experience with qualitative research, particularly in association with the UW Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network, now in its fourth phase (U01 HG008657). She has also contributed expertise to the Ethics of Inclusion project (R01 HG010330) as well as to a project focused on community engagement surrounding APOL1 genetic testing in African Americans (R01 HG007879). 

Lisa Hoffman (Urban Studies, UW Tacoma)

Lisa M. Hoffman (she/her/hers) is Professor in the School of Urban Studies at UW Tacoma.  Trained in cultural anthropology, her scholarship has focused on questions of power, governing, and social change, with a particular interest in subjectivity and its intersections with spatiality.  Geographically, the majority of her work has been located in urban China, with an extension of these organizing questions into other realms in the United States, such as science and technology studies, ethnic identity, and homelessness. Her analytical approach has been strongly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault – especially in terms of how she thinks about power, sources of authority, and subject formation processes. Her current research project – “Being ‘high risk’ for cancer: personal genetics, the present self and managing future disease” – engages science and technology studies and considers how genetics and precision health are shaping subjectivity and contemporary practices of living. It is concerned with what is at stake when cancer risk assessment scores and other more personalized prevention practices (e.g., genetic testing) become increasingly commonplace, expanding the number of people identified as at-risk. The project includes ethnographic fieldwork with individuals identified as high risk for cancer, clinicians doing early detection work, and experts (e.g., in nutrigenomics, genetic counseling) who help people manage their present lives for a potential future illness. It also includes research on institutional alliances that lead to the production of knowledge about cancer prevention as well as computational practices producing health risk scores.

Sarah Nelson (Genetic Analysis Center, Dept. of Biostatistics, UW Seattle)

Sarah Nelson is an interdisciplinary researcher interested in the ethical and social implications of genomics in research, clinical care, and everyday life. She is a Senior Research Scientist and Project Manager at the Genetic Analysis Center within the University of Washington (UW) Department of Biostatistics. She holds a PhD and MPH in Public Health Genetics from UW. Her graduate studies in Public Health Genetics have provided her with uniquely interdisciplinary training in the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetic research and its translation into clinical and consumer settings.

[2] Salon | Jan. 14, 2025 | Bioethics and Human Flourishing

Tim Brown (Department of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine)

Tim Brown joined the Department of Bioethics and Humanities in the School of Medicine in July 2021 as an Assistant Professor. He earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Washington, after earning a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is also a founding member of and long-term contributor to the Neuroethics Thrust within the Center for Neurotechnology at UW. He also leads diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts with the International Neuroethics Society. He works at the intersection of biomedical ethics, philosophy of technology, (black/latinx/queer) feminist thought, and aesthetics. His research explores the potential impact of neurotechnologies—systems that record and stimulate the nervous system—on end users’ sense of agency and embodiment. His work also interrogates neurotechnologies for their potential to exacerbate or create social inequities, in order to establish best practices for engineers. Finally, Dr. Brown’s approach to research is interdisciplinary, embedded, and relies on mixed methods; his work on interdisciplinary is aimed at encouraging deeper collaborations between humanists and engineers in the future.

Amy Hinterberger (Department of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine)

Amy Hinterberger is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Bioethics and Humanities in the School of Medicine at the University of Washington. Prior to joining University of Washington in 2024, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, UK. She has also held positions at the University of Warwick (2013 – 2017), Harvard University (2014), University of Oxford (2011 – 2013) and University of London (2010 – 2011).  A sociologist by training (PhD, LSE, 2010), her research addresses the ethical and political dynamics of biomedicine and biotechnology. Amy currently leads a team of researchers exploring the ethics and politics of stem cell models for human disease and development through a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award in the Social Sciences and Humanities called ‘Biomedical Research and the Politics of the Human’ ($753,351: 2020 – 2025): politicsofthehuman.org. Using qualitative empirical and ethnographic research methods, the project is designed as a social and ethical exploration into the changing relationship between humans, animals and biomedicine. Her research interests span multiple areas of innovation and technology, focusing particularly on cell-based technologies and genomics. Exploring the relationship between inequality and the social implications arising from emerging technologies is a key aspect of her scholarship. Additionally, she is interested in the intersections between sociology and bioethics, particularly in exploring the institutional governance and regulation of both humans and animals in biomedical research.  

Sue Trinidad (Department of Bioethics and Humanities, School of Medicine)

Sue Trinidad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioethics and Humanities, having worked as a Research Scientist in the department from 2005-2022. She is the co-Principal Investigator of an NIAID-funded grant, Alaska Native People Advancing Vaccine Uptake, which will use peer-to-peer outreach, education, and motivational interviewing to increase COVID-19 vaccination among Alaska Native and American Indian people in Alaska. She has conducted empirical bioethics work concerning the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genomic research and precision medicine with several large national consortia including the eMERGE Network, the Northwest-Alaska Pharmacogenomics Research Network, the CSER Consortium, and two Centers of Excellence in ELSI Research, the Center for Genomics and Healthcare Equality (CGHE) at UW and the Center for the Ethics of Indigenous Genomic Research (CEIGR) at the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include the dynamics and ethics of equitable collaboration in health research; patient-centered communication and medical decision-making; the ethical and social implications of genomic research, wide data-sharing, and broad consent; moral and dispositional development; and qualitative methods development. As a white settler engaged in research with Alaska Native and American Indian communities, Trinidad works to develop participatory, strengths-based approaches to health research that respect Tribal sovereignty and the right of Indigenous peoples to self-determination. She served on the UW Institutional Review Board from 2009-2014. Trinidad holds a PhD in educational psychology (Learning Sciences & Human Development) from UW, an MA from the Interdisciplinary Program in Health and Humanities at Michigan State University, and a BA in English from the College of William and Mary. She came to UW from an executive-level position in product development for companies specializing in telephone triage and disease management counseling.

Ilā Ravichandran (School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Tacoma)

Ilā Ravichandran is an assistant professor of legal studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She is an interdisciplinary sociologist who works at the intersections of feminist studies, critical carceral studies, legal studies, Black studies, and science & technology studies. Her research focuses on the intersections of science and law and engages with the global policing apparatus. To this end, her current research is a multi-method inquiry that analyzes the expanded use of genetics and genomics as a tool of racialized policing, with particular attention to the assemblages that converge to promote such an apparatus. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Network. She is the co-author of Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago (University of Minnesota Press). She is also a visual artist and urban farmer, orienting her life’s work towards liberatory and imaginative futures.

Co-sponsored by the UW Department of Bioethics and Humanities in the School of Medicine and the UW Tech Policy Lab.