Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/College/Unit Sociology Department
Science & Justice Research Center

Title Professor and Sociology Undergraduate Education Chair
Science & Justice Research Center Founding Director

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation History of Consciousness Department
Feminist Studies Department
Biomolecular Science & Engineering

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Sociology
Science and Technology
History of Science
New Media
Genomics

Web Site

Primary Office Location Rachel Carson College Academic Building
321

Additional Location(s) Engineering 2, room 523

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours By appointment.

Mail Stop Rachel Carson College Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

2002 - Ph.D., Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University
1993 - B.A., Political Science and B.S. in Biology, University of Kansas

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. Recently, she started a project to bike over one thousand miles through her home state of Kansas to learn from farmers, ranchers and other denizens of the high plains about how best to know and care for the prairie.

Summary of Expertise

Science and Technology; Race, Gender, Sexuality and Difference; History of Science and Technology; New Media; Cultural and Social Theory; Big Data; Genomics

Awards, Honors and Grants

Awards/Honors

• May-July 2019. Senior Fellow, Freiburg Institute of Advanced Study, Freiburg.
• 2017. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award.
• Fall 2015 Residency at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany.
• Present-2012. Visiting Professor for the Department of Social Sciences, Health and Medicine at King's College London.
• 2014. Residency at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany.
• 2013. Brocher Foundation Residency in Geneva, Switzerland.
• 2010-2012. Visiting Fellow: Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine and Biotechnology, at the London School of Economics.

Grants

• “Engineering Research Center for Convergent Genomics” (NSF Award No: EEC-1840470). June 2018-September 2019.  Award Amount: $100,000. (Co-PI)
• Comparative Analysis of Interdisciplinary Training Programs for STEM Scholars, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), Spring 2019-Summer 2020. Award Amount: $58,670 (Co-PI)
• “Race, Racism and Responsibility: Learning from the UNESCO Statements on Race.” UC Santa Cruz Faculty Research Grant. Summer 2017-Summer 2018. Award amount: $1275. 
• “UC North Bioethics Collaboratory for Life & Health Sciences.”  (UCOP Award No: MR-15-327911). Award Period: January 1, 2015-December 31, 2016. Award Amount: $298, 289 (UCSC Subaward amount: $17, 627). (Co-PI)
• “Open Data/Private Persons: Forging a New Social Contract for Biomedicine in an Age of Genomics and Big Data” (NSF Award No: SES-1451684). Award Period: February 1, 2015-June 30, 2016. Award Amount: $25,000.
• “Ethics and Justice in Science and Engineering Training Program” (NSF Award No: SES-0933027). Award Period: October 1, 2009-September 30, 2013.  Award Amount: $300,000 plus a $15,000 supplement awarded in 2011.

Selected Presentations

• “The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome,” American Society of Oncology Breakout Global Meeting, Bangkok, Thailand, October 2019.
• “Can Genomics be Anti-Racist?” Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences Grand Challenges Lecture Series, Keele University, UK, June 2019.
• “Personalized Medicine’s Problem of Meaning.” The Revolution of Personalized Medicine: Are We Going to Cure All Diseases and at What Cost? The Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Vatican City, April 2019.
• “The Postgenomic Condition: Truth, Race and Justice After the Genome.” The Science Conversation Lecture Series, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, April 2019.
• “When Prairie Meets Genome.” Keynote, Sociological Review, Newcastle, UK, June 2018.
• “The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome.” Cass Miller/Comm Lecture Series. University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, March 2018.
• “Just Biomedical Research: Genomic Knowledge as Public Hope and Concern.” Keynote Lecture, Biomedical Futures Symposium, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, August 2017.
• “Seeing Like A Prairie.” Keynote Lecture, Seeing Systems Workshop. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champain, March 2017.
• “On Science and Justice.”  Keynote Lecture.  Arguing with Justice Workshop, Warwick University, United Kingdom. June 2016.
• “Life on Third: Knowledge and Justice After the Genome.” Keynote at Science and Social Justice Think Tank, Kalamazoo College, April 2016.
• “The Postgenomic Condition: Rethinking Feminist Epistemology and Justice After the Genome.” Keynote at Launch of the Feminist Research Institute, UC Davis, February 2016.
• “The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome.” Franke Program Lecture in Science and the Humanities, Yale University, May 2014
• “The Anti-Racist Democratic Genome.”  Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues, Dickinson College, March 2014.  For recording of talk, see http://clarke.dickinson.edu/jenny-reardon/.
• “Governing Genomics: Rethinking Ethics, Publics and Participation.”  Plenary Address at the Launch of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Genomics Policy and Research Forum, Edinburgh, Scotland, September 2005.

Selected Publications

Books

• 2017. The Post Genomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, Knowledge After the Genome. Chicago University Press.
• 2005. Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. Princeton University.

Contributions to Books

• 2021. "Bloody Kansas: Forging Knowledge and Justice at the Horizon's Edge" in American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present. Radius Books.
• 2011. “Human Population Genomics and the Dilemma of Difference,” in Reframing Rights: The Constitutional Implications of Technological Change. MIT Press.
• 2008. “Race Without Salvation: Beyond the Science/Society Divide in Genomic Studies of Human Differences,” in Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age. Rutgers University Press
• 2006. "Creating Participatory Subjects: Race, Science and Democracy in a Genomic Age," in The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. University of Wisconsin Press.

Journal Articles

• 2019.  “Ends Everlasting.” British Journal of the History of Science. 4: 83-91.
• 2018.  “Race, Rome and the Genome.” British Journal of Sociology.
• 2016. “Bermuda 2.0.: Reflections from Santa Cruz.” Gigascience 5(1): 1-4 co-authored with Reardon, Jenny and Rachel Ankeny, Jenny Bangham, Katherine Weatherford Darling, Steve Hilgartner, Kathryn Maxson Jones, Beth Shapiro and Hallam Stevens.
• 2015. "Science and Justice: The Trouble and The Promise." Catalyst. Co-authored with J. Metcalf, M. Kenney, and K. Barad.
• 2013. Science and Justice Research Center Collaborations Group. "Experiments in Collaboration: Interdisciplinary Graduate Education in Science and Justice." PLoS Biology.
• 2013. “Indigenous Body Parts, Mutating Temporalities, and the Half-Lives of Postcolonial Technoscience.” Social Studies of Science. Co-authored with E. Kowal and J. Radin.
• 2013. “On the Emergence of Science and Justice.” Science, Technology and Human Values.
• 2012. “‘Your DNA is Our History’: Genomics, Anthropology, and the Construction of Whiteness as Property.” Current Anthropology. Co-authored with K. Tallbear.
• 2011. "The 'Persons' and 'Genomics' of Personal Genomics." Personalized Medicine.
• 2001. "The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction." Social Studies of Science 31(3): 357-388.

Popular Press

• 2013. "Should Patients Understand They Are Research Subjects." SF Gate.

Courses SOCY 10 Issues and Problems in American Society
SOCY 268A Science and Justice Experiments in Collaboration
SOCY 260 Culture, Knowledge, Power
SOCY 121 Sociology of Health and Medicine
SOCY 132 Sociology of Science and Technology