Graduate Students with STS Interests - Profiles

Nick Bartlett
UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
Email: Nicholas.bartlett@ucsf.edu

Nick Bartlett is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCSF/UCB Joint Medical Anthropology program. He is interested in questions surrounding citizenship and addiction in contemporary China, particularly the shifting relationships between state actors and heroin addicts in the context of a rapidly expanding national opiate substitution program. His background is in international public health and he continues to work at a foundation funding harm reduction efforts in Asia while pursuing his degree.

Ruha Benjamin
Department of Sociology
School of Public Health
Email: ruha9@berkeley.edu

Ruha Benjamin is a Ph.D. student in the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology. Her research interests include biomedicalization, stratified mortality & reproduction, and the history of race and science. Her current project focuses on the social impact and meaning of stem cell transplantation across racial/ethnic difference.

Danah Boyd
School of Information


Danah Boyd is a Ph.D. student in the School of Information at UC Berkeley. She studies how people negotiate their presentation of self in mediated social contexts to unknown audiences. She uses ethnographic methods and social visualizations in order to understand everyday practices. Recently, her work has focused on MySpace, blogging, instant messaging and youth culture. Her dissertation is focused on how youth culture uses social technologies as digital publics in order to make sense of their cultural and social surroundings.

Website: http://www.danah.org
and http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts

Carlo Caduff
Department of Anthropology
Email: caduff@berkeley.edu

Carlo Caduff is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated from the University of Zurich in 2002 where he worked as an assistant at the Chair of the Department of the Social Studies of Science (Professor Helga Nowotny) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH). He co-translated two books by Paul Rabinow into German: Anthropologie der Vernunft. Studien zu Wissenschaft und Lebensführung (Suhrkamp: 2004) and Was ist Anthropologie? (Suhrkamp: 2004). His interests include the anthropology of modernity, science and technology studies, biosecurity, post genomics, technologies of pathogen detection, and the history of anthropology. Carlo Caduff is a regular contributor to the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

Leticia Maria C. da N. Cesarino
Deaprtment of Anthropology
Email: leticia.cesarino@gmail.com

Leticia Cesarino holds a Social Sciences B.A. from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, and a Social Anthropology M.A. from the University of Brasilia, both in Brazil. Her Master’s thesis focuses on the legislative debates around the 2005 Brazilian Biosecurity Law, which established rules for research & trade with genetically modified organisms and embryonic stem cell research in Brazil. She continues to work and publish on the latter topic, while gradually developing her Ph.D. proposal on the history of sugarcane technologies in Brazil.

Kun Chen
Department of Anthropology
Email: kunchen@berkeley.edu

Kun Chen is a Ph.D. Candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the social and cultural aspects of technological innovation in China and the related global and local impacts. She is currently doing dissertation fieldwork in Beijing Tsinghua Science Park to examine how high-tech returnees and local professionals understand the meaning of innovation, and how the knowledge networks function to develop technological products in China. Her participant observation tries to reveal various cross-cultural problems in the practics of innovation development among China's emerging global class of scientists and engineers.

Jia-shin Chen
Department of Sociology
Email: jschen1973@hotmail.com

Jia-shin Chen, M.D., M.A. (History), is currently a graduate student in Sociology at University of California, San Francisco. She is interested in (1) substance use, especially how science and policy are intertwined to articulate the ways by which opiate users are conceived and treated. (2) psychiatry and psychotherapy, especially how bodily symptoms in hysteria are conceptualized and managed historically and (3) other general issues in STS.

Johanna Crane
UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
Email: jcrane@itsa.ucsf.edu

Johanna Crane is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCSF/UCB Joint Medical Anthropology Program. She is conducting dissertation research in the U.S. and in Uganda about the science and politics of drug-resistant HIV. She is interested in how scientists construct knowledge about HIV drug resistance and Africa. Her interests include postcolonial technoscience, the anthropology of pharmaceuticals, the political economy of HIV/AIDS and critical geography.

Cassandra S. Crawford
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Email: ccrawf1@itsa.ucsf.edu

Cassandra Crawford's research, concerned with the intersections of bodies and technologies, analyzes the relationships between innovations in prosthetic science, the medical phenomenon known as Phantom Limb Syndrome (PLS), and the lived experience of part-loss. Specifically, the work engages biomedical discourses, from an STS perspective, by employing in-depth interviews and content analysis to explore the connections between 1) lived partial-ity; 2) changes in the categorization, characterization, etiology and treatment of PLS; and 3) the socio-cultural and historical shifts relevant to the modernization of dismemberment, or the expansion and increased sophistication of technologies and techniques used to replace parts of the body.

Jessica Davies
Department of Rhetoric
Email: jessdavies@msn.com

Jessica Davies is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Rhetoric and the Program Coordinator at The Science, Technology and Society Center (STSC). She completed her B.A. in English and Media Studies from the University of Sussex in Brighton, England and earned an M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. Her current research looks at the traffic between Victorian literature and science in the late nineteenth century with a focus on the political and ethical implications of the rise of biological thinking. Her dissertation is called, "Life Expectancies: Late Victorian Literature and the Biopolitics of Survival."

Jason Delborne
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Email: delborne@nature.berkeley.edu

Jason Delborne’s research engages an STS framework to understand the practice of scientific dissent in agricultural biotechnology. Focusing on a tangle of controversies involving former UCB professor Ignacio Chapela, his dissertation proposes a model to understand the diversity of scientific dissent. With particular attention to 'dissident science', Delborne explores the complex boundary of science/politics in a scientific field with significant political and economic stakes. He is also a coordinator of The Berkeley Biotechnology Working Group, which focuses on social, political, and ethical issues of biotechnology.

Chris Ganchoff
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Email: Chris.Ganchoff@ucsf.edu

Chris Ganchoff is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. His interests include medical sociology, science & technology studies, social movement theory and qualitative methodologies. His dissertation research is looking at health social movements within the field of biotechnology, as well as the set of debates positioned under the sign of "conflict of interest." The narrative arc of his dissertation begins with the drafting of Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act, which passed in November, 2004, through the implementation of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the organization created by Prop 71. He has conducted participant observation of the Yes on 71 Northern California field campaign, as well as interviews with activists (both in support and in opposition to Prop 71), campaign staff, and bench researchers who worked on behalf of the campaign. These data reveal the contours of "collective identities" formed around diseases or conditions that could be ameliorated by stem cell technology, as well as the institutional transformations that have brought biomedical scientists into varied relationships with different publics.

Stephanie Gerson
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management
Email: sgerson@nature.berkeley.edu

Stephanie Gerson graduates in the Spring of 2008 with an M.S. in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Her research proposes the emergence of social software-enabled collectively intelligent consumer behavior, which she refers to as “peer consumption.” She examines various applications emerging in the social software space, including Carrotmob and the work of the Consumer Information Lab, and suggests that they enable consumers to coordinate their consumer behavior for purposes of governing global production and consumption systems. She argues that peer consumption as a governance mechanism is also being incubated in games – specifically, the convergence between serious games and ubiquitous games – a possibility she refers to as “ludo-governance.” Most broadly, she proposes that social software applications enable many more consumers to engage in consumer governance by doing much less, a phenomenon she refers to as “long tail governance.”

Jennifer Harrington
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Email: Jennifer.Harrington@ucsf.edu

Jennifer Harrington is a graduate student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Univeristy of California, San Francisco. Her studies focus on contemporary bioethics and its derivation from moral philosophy. Her area of inquiry is in nanotechnology, specifically de-animation and cellular regeneration associated with cryonics. Following her interest in ethics and preservation technologies, she is a researcher on an NIH funded study examining the disposition of frozen embryos.

Benjamin Hickler
UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
Email: bhickler@berkeley.edu

Benjamin Hickler is a graduate student in Medical Anthropology at UCSF and UC Berkeley. His dissertation project examines international efforts to control avian influenza and foot-and-mouth disease in the countries of the Lower Mekong: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam. He conducted one year of multi-sited fieldwork in Australia and Southeast Asia with two groups of participants who have different relationships to animal disease control activities: 1) professional experts employed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) or partner organizations to work on biosecurity projects and 2) backyard farmers, livestock buyers, community leaders, and village animal health workers who participate in FAO projects to control avian flu or foot-and-mouth disease. The dissertation shows how transnational efforts to reach women and ethnic minorities regarding emerging infections are transforming national regimes of veterinary and human health and changing relations between citizens, communities, and states in the region.

Leigh Johnson
Department of Geography
Email: leighjohnson@berkeley.edu

Leigh Johnson is a graduate student in the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley. Her work assesses economic and social responses to climate processes. She is currently examining how institutions of governance and capital are innovatively reconfiguring markets and sovereignty in response to recent environmental change. Her specific interests include: proprietary climate and hurricane models, uncertainty and risk associated with global warming and extreme events, markets in weather and climate-related derivatives, and shifting sovereignty and extractive regimes in the melting Arctic.

Renee Kuriyan
Energy and Resources Group
Email: rkuriyan@berkeley.edu

Renee Kuriyan is a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California Berkeley. For her dissertation research, she is focusing on the political economy of how information and communication technologies (ICTs) are being used as tools for development. Renee’s doctoral research examines the social and economic aspects of these ICT kiosk projects in India. Specifically she is examining how the structuring of ICT projects leads to particular outcomes for entrepreneurs and households. She uses ethnographic methods to explore state, society and market relationships within this context. Her research explores the concept of 'development' within these 'ICT for development' (ICT4D) projects both empirically and ideologically.

Jennifer A. Liu
UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
Email: jaliu@uclink.berkeley.edu

Jennifer Liu is currently in Taiwan investigating social, ethical, and political aspects of stem cell research. Her areas of inquiry include how ethical thinking informs practices of technoscience, how biotechnological networks of people, institutions, and scientific objects are produced and mobilized, and how they might shift given the transnational context of stem cell research. Specifically, she is investigating transnational bioethics, the production of flexible scientists, and biotechnology as a project of nation-building.

Theresa MacPhail
UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
Email: tmacphail@berkeley.edu

Theresa MacPhail completed an interdisciplinary Master's Degree in Science Studies at New York University, exploring the philisophical implications of retroviral remnants in the human genome. Her thesis, "The Viral Gene", was published in the journal Science as Culture. Upon obtaining the Master's, she moved to Hong Kong, where she lived for three years studying Chinese and doing on-the-ground research on bird flu. Currently, she is in the Medical Anthropology program, focusing on the bird flu virus as a potent symbol for the intersection of international politics, global public health, and biosecurity.

Larisa Mann
Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program
Boalt Hall School of Law
Email: larisa@boalthall.berkeley.edu

Larisa Mann is a Ph.D student in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Boalt Hall Law School. Her work is on the social implications of intellectual property laws. Her recent research includes a paper presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference entitled "Cracks or doorways? The Changing Legal Framework for Ethnomusicological Research and Musical Practice" in which she discussed the implications of understanding research and music technologies as aspects of ubiquitous computing, and the publication on WireTap Magazine and Alternet.org of several articles and posts on technology and rights. Her other research includes the interdisciplinary exploration of the limits and possibilities of using property rights to protect privacy, equity, material and cultural survival, and cultural practices. She works as a research assistant for the Samuelson Clinic for Law, Technology and Public Policy.

Abigail Martin
Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management


Abby is a Ph.D. student who holds a BA in sociology with a minor in Environmental Science from Barnard College, Columbia University. She is broadly interested in how environmental governance shapes industrial change and innovation. Since coming to Berkeley, she has been researching green chemistry policy frameworks, biomass chemistry innovations, institutional change in international agricultural research organizations, and biofuel innovation and governance networks. Her dissertation project examines the development of sustainability standards for biofuels and the relationship between such governance projects and the emerging ‘bio-based’ economy. Prior to coming to graduate school she held research and consulting positions in organizations working on international cultural heritage protection, air quality issues in Houston, and sustainability for the chemical industry.

Arpita Roy
Department of Anthropology
Email: arpita@berkeley.edu

Arpita Roy is a graduate student at UC Berkeley in Cultural Anthropology with a primary interest in looking at the concept of symmetry in the evolutionary theory of homeotic genes as a locus of contestation and classification of knowledges and practices. The focus is on the semiosis of genetic coding that frames organisms as objects of knowledge. The reading of biological discourse through the concept of symmetry will not be seen as emblematic of growth and development (which is how the discourse names it), but as symptomatic of vital normativity. She previously worked on a reexamination of Kuhn 's monograph on the black-body radiation and the quantum innovation in light of his own theory of scientific change.

Thurka Sangaramoorthy
UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Program in Medical Anthropology
Email: thurka@uclink.berkeley.edu

Thurka Sangaramoorthy is a Ph.D. candidate in Medical Anthropology at UCSF and UCB. She is currently in Miami, FL conducting her dissertation research on the notion of race and ethnicity as surrogate markers of risk. Her research seeks to clarify what is captured by “race” and “ethnicity” in HIV/AIDS research and surveillance data, and to investigate these concepts as representations of risk. In particular, the research explores the impact of race and ethnicity in medicine and public health by focusing on "on the ground" experts (health and social service providers and educators) and Haitians and Haitian Americans, a complex grouping of individuals who are seen as a clearly defined racial and ethnic group identified as at increased risk for HIV infection. This research builds upon studies that question not whether race and ethnicity matter in determining health and illness, but how they are theorized and rationalized to matter.

Anke Schwittay
Department of Anthropology
Email: schwitta@berkeley.edu

Anke Schwittay's research focuses on the production of 'Global Corporate Citizenship' by U.S. transnational high-tech companies. Her work analyzes the latters' appropriation of the language and legalities of citizenship in the context of historical and legal shifts in the U.S. that legitimize corporate activities in social and political domains; of the ethicalization of global business, and of the emergence of transnational corporations as a site for the constitution of neoliberal citizens. She is conducting ongoing research in Silicon Valley, Costa Rica and India. Anke is also one of tthe co-founders of the RiOS Institute, a Berkeley and Silicon Valley based organization developing human-centered research and design for ICTD (Information and Communication Technologies for Development) practitioners.

Ryan Shaw
School of Information
Email: ryanshaw@SIMS.Berkeley.EDU

Ryan Shaw is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley’s School of Information and a researcher at Yahoo! Research Berkeley. My research interests include: 1. how models and methods of commons-based peer production can be applied to audiovisual media production and organization; 2. systems of mediation between traditional hierarchical forms of media production and newer networked forms of media production; and 3. how the development of standards for enabling the automated processing of media shapes and is shaped by these networked forms of media production I am also quite interested in new media art and entertainment and try to involve myself in projects that explore the spaces between technology entertainment, art, and design.

Website: http://aeshin.org/

Lisa Stampnitzky
Department of Sociology
Email: stamp@berkeley.edu

Lisa Stampnitzky is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. Her dissertation research investigates the origins and development of a specialized field of terrorism studies, and an associated set of experts on terrorism, in the United States from the early 1970's to the present day, asking how are the boundaries of legitimate and influential knowledge produced.

Katherine Thomson
Department of Sociology
Email: kat.thomson@ucsf.edu

Katherine Thomson is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Francisco. She has been studying the social construction of sex hormones and has completed an interview project that analyzes scientists' conflicting views on hormone replacement therapies. She is continuing research on this topic, looking at the emergence of 'perimenopause' as a lifestage and investigating the controversies surrounding environmental endocrine disruptors and male infertility.

Daniel Ussishkin
Department of History
Email: ussishkin@berkeley.edu

Daniel Ussishkin’s research traces the histories of 'morale' in modern Britain as a concept through which human motivation and conduct was conceived, a concept that articulated the problematized relationship between group and individuals, and through which the meanings of social citizenship in a democratizing society were negotiated. While his work traces the history of 'morale' since the late eighteenth century, the burden of his work rests in the period of two world wars, a period that saw the transformation of the nature of government and the creation of new forms of scientific truths, practices, and technologies through which 'morale' was understood, known, or managed. Hence his work offers significant contributions to our understanding of the interrelations between social sciences and other social and political practices of government and knowledge.

Jeff Wolf
Department of History
Email: jeffwolf@berkeley.edu

Jeff Wolf is a Ph.D. student in the History department at UC Berkeley. He completed his B.A. in Philosophy at Princeton University in 2002. His research interests cohere around the histories of the human sciences—especially those concerning the mind and brain—and the biological sciences, primarily genetics and evolutionary biology.