Professor Jenny Reardon - The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome

Grand Challenges lecture series

Brought to you in partnership with the Keele Race Equality Lecture Series.

Can Genomics Be Anti-Racist?
At the end of the last millennium, the proposal of the Human Genome Diversity Project and the publication of Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) controversial bestseller, The Bell Curve, sparked worries that the new science of genomics would reignite scientific racism. Since WWII, human geneticists had labored to distance the study of human genes from eugenics and the Nazi regime. Would that work be undone before genomic research had even really begun? To avert this possibility, in the wake of the sequencing of the human genome—or the postgenomic era—genome scientists and their supporters proposed a new ‘democratic’ approach to genomics. In several high profile cases, they proposed to give power back to “the people” to define themselves, and to control use of their DNA. Yet the problem of race and racism persisted. From the International HapMap Project, to David Reich’s March 2018 editorial in the New York Times, this talk explains how and by what means debates about ‘race’ and racism remain central and formative of the postgenomic condition.

Jenny Reardon is a Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research draws into focus questions about identity, justice and democracy that are often silently embedded in scientific ideas and practices, particularly in modern genomic research. Her training spans molecular biology, the history of biology, science studies, feminist and critical race studies, and the sociology of science, technology and medicine. She is the author of Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics (Princeton University Press, 2005) and The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome (Chicago University Press, Fall 2017). She has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from, among others, the National Science Foundation, the Max Planck Institute, the Humboldt Foundation, the London School of Economics, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, and the United States Congressional Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Refreshments will be available from 5.30pm onwards.

This lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.

The Keele Nursery will be open and free of charge for staff and students attending the lecture.

Please note that are no restrictions for visitors on parking in areas marked for staff parking, including the Keele Hall courtyard, from 5.00pm.


Event date
Event Time
6:00PM
Location
Keele Hall - The Salvin Room
Organiser
Steve Kilner or Jo Flynn
Contact email
ilas@keele.ac.uk
Contact telephone
+44 (0)1782 7 34449 / 34434

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