SCIENCE IN HUMAN CULTURE PROGRAM

Steven Epstein (Ph.D., Sociology, Berkeley) is the John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Sociology. He studies the contested production of knowledge, especially biomedical knowledge, with an emphasis on the interplay of social movements, experts, and health institutions, and with a focus on the politics of sexuality, gender, and race. He is the author of two prize-winning books, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (California, 1996) and Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (Chicago, 2007), and he is a co-editor of Three Shots at Prevention: The HPV Vaccine and the Politics of Medicine’s Simple Solutions (Johns Hopkins, 2010). Epstein serves on the editorial board of the journal Social Studies of Science, and he has served on the council of the Society for Social Studies of Science. He is the current chair of the Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association.