Research Agenda
My research is situated at the intersections of science and technology studies, medical sociology, and global and transnational sociology. More specifically, I am interested in how experts, publics, and the state shape developments in science, technology, and medicine amidst the backdrop of globalization, with an eye towards how to make innovation equitable and accessible for all. I investigate these relationships in a range of topics, such as in precision medicine’s global spread as a policy idea and scientific project, as well as the politics of expertise with Covid-19 and Long Covid. I am also in the beginning stages of my book project on China’s aspirations to become a leader in global science, which examines how Chinese biomedical scientists orient themselves differently towards global norms, practices, and goals. My research has been supported by the Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies Program in China Studies, the Social Science Research Council, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, and the Precision Medicine and Society Program.
1. The Global Emergence of Precision Medicine
Ever since the National Research Council’s 2011 report, Towards Precision Medicine, and the Obama administration’s announcement of the Precision Medicine Initiative in 2015, governments and organizations around the world have initiated various projects that deploys genomic information and other types of health-related “big data” to improve processes of medical diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. I have collected interviews with biomedical researchers and biotech entrepreneurs associated with the emergent field in China, as well as participating and observing in scientific and professional meetings. Somewhat relatedly, I am also interested in controversies around human germline gene-editing and the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine, and the intersections that these fields have with precision medicine. This research is supported by grants from the Precision Medicine and Society Program, the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies Program in China Studies, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
Findings from this ongoing project is published:
In Science as Culture (2023): Revisiting China’s gene-editing controversy and the “ethical choreography” of individual scientists in proposing what they consider to be ethically good and innovative science
In Public Understanding of Science (2022): On debates around “genetic talent testing” on online forums between parents and Chinese scientists (a blog post from the journal about this study can be found here)
In Social Science & Medicine (2021): A bibliometric analysis of precision medicine in comparison with previous scientific/intellectual movements in biomedicine
In Science, Technology, & Human Values (2021): A comparison between the institutional arrangements behind precision medicine in China and Brazil (with Renan Gonçalves Leonel da Silva)
In BioSocieties (2020): Draws on preliminary interviews to discuss the imaginary of precision medicine and the public from China’s scientific elite
2. The Politics of Expertise of Covid-19 and Long Covid
With collaborators, we are tracing the politics of expertise around the Covid-19 pandemic and Long Covid. Much of this work is currently being conducted through the Covid-19 and Trust in Science (CATS) Project, which seeks to understand the experience of Long Covid patients and how they come to trust and mistrust medical advice. This build on a paper (with Gil Eyal), which used data from an online community of Covid-19 patients to look at credible performances of lay expertise and the processes of becoming a lay expert in situations of radical uncertainty. We conducted a survey as well as follow-up interviews with over 100 Long Covid patients. Additionally, I have also examined cross-national responses to the pandemic. We (with Chuncheng Liu and Zheng Fu) examined the responses of experts in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States to Covid-19. And, with the support of the Social Science Research Council’s Rapid-Response Grants, we (with Renan Gonçalves Leonel da Silva) looked at how sociotechnical imaginaries dominant in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States produced certain blind spots that led to skepticism.
Findings from this ongoing project is published or are forthcoming:
In Qualitative Sociology (2022): Using computational and content analysis of four months of data from a Covid-19 patient forum to describe credible performances of lay expertise under conditions of radical uncertainty (with Gil Eyal)
In Sociological Forum (2022): Comparison of expert narratives in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States, and how past experiences with disease were used by experts to create resonant expertise (with Chuncheng Liu and Zheng Fu)
In SSM-Qualitative Research in Health (2022): Results from an online survey of Long Covid patients active on social media in the United States, and the labeling of their interactions with medical professionals as gaslighting (with Cristian Capotescue, Gil Eyal, and Gabrielle Finestone), this paper received the 2023 Star-Nelkin Paper Award from the American Sociological Association’s Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section
In Science, Technology and Society (2022): Comparison of blind spots in sociotechnical imaginaries in Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and the negative feedback loops of public health messaging that contributed to skepticism (with Renan Gonçalves Leonel da Silva)
In Global Health Action (2023): A peer reviewed commentary on how we should think about Long Covid as a global health problem, and how the condition is experienced in the Global South, drawing on survey results from U.S. and Brazil
Brief preliminary analyses have been published in Science as Culture, and the newsletters of the ASA and SSRC, Footnotes and Items; relatedly, a pre-print of another study that makes use of computational methods to analyze Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy with an interdisciplinary group of collaborators can be found here