Here are some of the primary research interests that our faculty pursue. To find out more, follow the link for the researcher's name.
Associated Faculty
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Charlotte A. Abney Salomon
History of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology; Discovery and invention; Early modern science
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Babak Ashrafi
The history of the study of matter and motion in the 19th and 20th centuries, multiple intellectual and institutional transformations that produced the discipline of modern physics.
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Kathleen Brown
women and gender; slavery; masculinity; race; history of the body; health and medicine
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Carolyn C. Cannuscio
Health and Social Behavior
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Cynthia Connolly
Dr. Connolly's research analyzes the forces that have shaped children's health care delivery and family policy in the United States. Her
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Zoltan Domotor
Philosophy of Science
Applied Logic
Epistemology
Cognitive Science -
David E. Dunning
History of computing, history of mathematics, gender and science, language and writing in scientific practice
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Julie A. Fairman
Dr. Fairman's research focuses on the history of 20th century health care issues pervading contemporary nursing practice. Much of her recent work addresses the relationship between gender, nursing and technology (critical care) and the history of the social construction of professional boundaries (the history of the nurse practitioner movement). This research has been utilized by members of Congress and by other policy-making bodies such as the Ministry of Health of New Zealand. She is currently investigating the influence of the nursing profession on health policy and looking at the role of the patient as health policy advocate. Other work examines the post-World War II history of nursing scholarship and disciplinary development. Dr. Fairman serves as the 2009 IOM/AAN/ANF Scholar in Residence and will work with the RWJ/IOM Commission on Investing in the Future of Nursing.
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Chris Feudtner
Complex chronic conditions
Family and parent supports -
Sarah Hope Kagan
Dr. Kagan's program of clinical research is centered on human experience and illness, with a focus on symptom experience for older adults particularly those who have cancer. Her second book - forthcoming from Penn Press in 2009 - is entitled Cancer in the Lives of Older Americans: Blessings and Battles. Dr. Kagan commonly examines the experience of cancer for older adults through narrative inquiry using head and neck cancer as a model of cancer in older adults. Her current explorations include a collaborative project to understand embodiment in younger and older individuals who have oral tongue cancer. Dr. Kagan welcomes undergraduate students, in particular, as collaborators in her research.
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Elizabeth Mackenzie
After receiving her doctorate from University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Mackenzie conducted research at Penn’s Institute of Aging on cultural competence and health beliefs. For five years, she was a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Penn’s School of Medicine, where she did innovative research on spirituality and mental health. Dr. Mackenzie teaches in the Health and Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and is an Associate Fellow of the Center for Public Health Initiatives and an Associate Fellow of the Institute on Aging. She has held positions as a Penn Writing Fellow, Senior Research Associate at Fox Chase Cancer Center, and Project Director at the Center for Mental Health Policy and Research. Dr. Mackenzie has presented at numerous national and international conferences, most recently the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (2011), the Bridging the Hearts and Minds of Youth Conference at UCSD Center for Mindfulness (2013) and the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (2013). Dr. Mackenzie teaches and publishes in the fields of integrative medicine, psychosocial determinants of health, sustainability studies, and mindfulness-based interventions.
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David Mandell
Dr. Mandell’s research focuses on the organization, financing and delivery of services to children with autism, and provides the basis for the development of interventions at the individual, provider and system levels to decrease the age at which children with autism are recognized and enter treatment, and to improve the services and supports available to them and their families. He is the recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) career development award to understand why the diagnosis of autism is so often delayed, and principal investigator on an NIMH-funded study to examine the relationship between states’ policies and their delivery of health services to children with autism.
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Paul Wolff Mitchell
The history of race and science in the 19th century in the United States and Europe; history of anatomy, museums, and anthropology; genomic technologies, repatriation and ethics of human remains collections
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Adam Mohr
Medical Anthropology and History, African Christianity, Medical Hesitancy, Colonial West African Physicians, Global Health, Transnational Migration, Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, the US
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Rebecca Mueller
History of Genetics, Disability, Ethical, Legal, Social Implications of Genetics and Genomics
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Richard Pepino
His interests include public policy related to environmental health and alternative teaching methods in urban public education.
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Ian Petrie
the history of science, technology and development in India and Bangladesh
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Adriana Petryna
Cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, social studies of science and technology, globalization, state formation and citizenship, Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union, and the United States.
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Ralph Rosen
Greek literature and intellectual history
Ancient comic and satirical poetic genres
Ancient medicine -
Jason Schnittker
Why are social conditions related to health? We've known for many years that social conditions--including education, income, and race/ethnicity--are related to health. It's not always clear, however, why these relationships exist or persist. I'm interested in understanding why social factors are related to health, and focus, in particular, on psychosocial factors, which includes things like stress, personality, and assorted beliefs and perceptions. I'm also interested in how social and genetic factors work in tandem to produce good or bad health. In all my work, I'm interested in both mental and physical health, as I think both are important for understanding the health of a population. Consistent with this, I've explored mortality, disease, and disability, but also anxiety, depressive symptoms, and happiness.
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Jesse Smith
History of technology, environmental history, public history
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Susan B. Sorenson
The epidemiology and prevention of violence, including the areas of homicide, suicide, sexual assault, child abuse, battering, and firearms; how gender, ethnicity, and nativity are related to risk of violence; global perspectives on gender, work and violence.
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Mary Summers
American politics and political thought
Interest groups, social movements, and public policy
Politics of food, agriculture, the environment, health, labor, race, education, social welfare and service learning -
Kenneth S. Zaret
Dr. Zaret’s laboratory discovered special gene regulatory proteins called “pioneer factors” that are among the first to bind genes in embryonic development; pioneer factors loosen the local chromosomal structure and allow genes to be activated. His laboratory also identified a dynamic signaling network that extends from the external cell environment to the genome and induces liver and pancreas tissues in the embryo. Information from these studies is being used by diverse groups to generate new liver cells and pancreatic beta cells from stem cells. Recent studies from Dr. Zaret’s laboratory have unveiled molecular barriers that can be overcome to help convert one type of cell into another. His laboratory has also used stem cell technology to develop a new experimental model for human pancreatic cancer.
Emeritus and Retired Faculty & Staff
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Mark B. Adams
General history of science, history of biology (genetics, population genetics, Darwin, Darwinism and evolutionary theory, morphology, experimental biology), Russian and Soviet science, institutional history, comparative history of eugenics, nature-nurture controversy, scientific futurism, science and religion, science and literature, science fiction, writing.
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Ruth Schwartz Cowan
History of technology, history of genetics, genetics and social policy, history of reproduction, history of medical technology, gender and science, medicine, technology
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Steven Feierman
History of health and healing in Africa, the content and uses of orally transmitted knowledge, and the place of knowledge about Africa in the social sciences.
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Ann Norton Greene
Envirotechnical history: Animals, energy, Infrastructures.
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Robert E. Kohler
History of field sciences; scientific practices in lab and field
Current Project: Book manuscript, "Inside Stories: Resident Observing in the Human and Life Sciences"
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Nathan Sivin
the social relations of Chinese medicine, from a point of view which combines the conceptual tools of history of science with those of cultural and social anthropology and sociology
intellectual biography of Shen Kua 沈括 (1031-1095)
translations of key documents for a source book of Chinese science and medicine
the theoretical structure of alchemy -
Janet Tighe
American medical profession's negotiations for social and cultural authority, with a special interest in medical-legal interactions
Development of medical education and training programs in the twentieth century
Social history of mental illness, particularly the development of forensic psychiatry in the United States
Traditions of public health provision in the United States
Policing and accreditation mechanisms for American healers
Department Faculty
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Robert A. Aronowitz
history of 20th century disease, epidemiology, population health
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David S. Barnes
- history of public health
- history of infectious diseases, epidemics, and quarantine
- urban history
- nineteenth-century Europe
- public history
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Sebastián Gil-Riaño
Global histories of race science, anti-racism in science, postcolonial studies of science, indigeneity and science, history of international development, history of the human sciences, history of food and nutrition, Latin American history
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Harun Küçük
Sociology of science
Science and Translation
Historiography of Non-Western Science
Cultural history of early modern science and technology
Science and philosophy in the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic world
Science Studies
Science and religion
Global history
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M. Susan Lindee
Genetics and genomics
Cold War science
Warfare and science -
Beth Linker
Social and cultural history of U.S. medicine and surgery in the 19th and 20th centuries, disability history, war studies, gender studies, as well as the history of bioethics, sexuality, and health care policy.
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Ramah McKay
Critical global health; humanitarianism and development; history and temporality; the anthropology of biomedicine; material approaches to medical anthropology
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Jonathan D. Moreno
History of bioethics
Politics and the life sciences
Neuroethics
History and philosophy of social science -
Projit Bihari Mukharji
- Race Science
- Genetics
- Disease Ecologies
- Physical Anthropology
- Science & the Supernatural
- Forensic Science
- Nineteenth-Century Chemistry
- Colonial & Indigenous Medicines
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Elly R. Truitt
Her current projects explore temporality and periodization, and the role of Christian theology in the historiography of science. Her second book, Marvelous Inventions: Roger Bacon, the Middle Ages, and the Making of Modern Science examines all of these through the work of thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon. He outlined the potential of natural knowledge and human endeavor to create amazing machines in the late medieval period. The adoption of Arabic texts and ideas by Bacon helped configure his reputation in the early modern period as an experimental and technological visionary, revealing the ways in which invention and circulation inflect one another. A different project, on the mechanical clock and the codex, also takes up questions of technology and periodization, arguing that both need to be understood as chrono-technologies that were also central to the production and transmission of narratives of Christian universality. Finally, she is also working on her third book, about courtly science in the medieval world. Different courts (Latin Christian, Byzantine, Islamicate) between 750-1300 appear as case studies to identify how science was fostered and practiced at secular and religious courts, and the extent to which the natural knowledge pursued at courts—such as engineering, navigation, alchemy, and divination—was valued alongside text-based natural philosophical frameworks.
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Beans Velocci
Queer and feminist science and technology studies; history of sex, gender, and sexuality; trans history; history of race science and eugenics; classification; uncertainty; life sciences; 19th and 20th century United States
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Adelheid Voskuhl
Heidi Voskuhl's research field comprises the history of technology from the early modern to the modern period. Her broader interests include the philosophy of technology, the history of the Enlightenment, and modern European intellectual and cultural history.
Teaching Faculty
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Andi Johnson
the anthropology and history of exercise physiology
epistemologies of human sciences
lab-field relationships
postcolonial science and technology studies
the politics of the body -
Amy S.F. Lutz
History of autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities; public policy and vulnerable populations; history of psychiatry; bioethics