Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin is a sociologist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her work sits at the intersection of studies of science, technology, and society and race, ethnicity, and gender. The primary focus of her work is the relationship between innovation and equity. This focus is clearly expressed in her most recent book, People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (2013).^[1] There, as well as her previous publications and work since, Benjamin critically investigates how innovation and design often builds upon or reinforces inequalities. In particular, Benjamin investigates how and why scientific, commercial, and popular discourses and practices around genomics have incorporated racial-ethnic and gendered categories. In People's Science, Benjamin also argues for a more inclusive, responsible, and public scientific community.^[2]

Benjamin also works as a public intellectual, having spoken at TedxBaltimore,^[3] blogged at The Huffington Post,^[4] and co-organized Black to the Future: An Imagination Incubator.^[5] She is a past professor at Boston University, previously held a position as a postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics,^[6] and is also a past fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Science, Technology and Society.^[7] Benjamin is also a past recipient of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (in 2012-13).^[8]

Publications

• People's Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press, 2013)
• "Genetics and Global Public Health: Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia", Simon Dyson and Karl Atkin (eds), Ch11, Organized Ambivalence: When Stem Cell Research & Sickle Cell Disease Converge. (Routledge, 2012)
• "Organized Ambivalence: When Stem Cell Research & Sickle Cell Disease Converge". Ethnicity & Health, 2011 Vol. 16, Issue 4-5: 447-463.
• "A Lab of Their Own: Genomic Sovereignty as Postcolonial Science Policy". Policy & Society 2009 Vol. 28, Issue 4: 3

References