Star Trek Meets the Black Panthers: Experimenting with Science and Technology Studies In and Outside the Academy

Time: 12:00 PM-1:30 PM

Location: MacAlister Hall, Room 2019-2020, 33rd and Chestnut Street, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA

Ruha Benjamin, PhD, will give a lecture on translational social science and experimenting across the lay-expert divide.

Ruha Benjamin is an assistant professor in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, and a Faculty Associate in the Program on the History of Science, the Center for Health and Wellbeing, the Program on Gender and Sexuality Studies, the Program in Global Health and Health Policy, and the Department of Sociology. She specializes in the interdisciplinary study of science, medicine, and biotechnology; race-ethnicity and gender; health and biopolitics; and the sociology of knowledge. Ruha is the author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier, which examines the tension between innovation and equity in the context of state investment in stem cell research and against the backdrop of medical experimentation on subordinate social groups. She is working on a second project, Provincializing Science: Mapping and Marketing ‘Difference’ After the Genome, which investigates the scientific and popular uptake of genomics in South Africa, India, and the United States. And finally, Ruha is experimenting with science fiction as a site of sociological knowledge and praxis--Black to the Future: An Imagination Incubator includes courses, workshops, and publications that explore how the arts, activism, and scholarship can be integrated to construct alternative social realities. For more info: www.ruhabenjamin.com and https://blacktothefuture.princeton.edu; and on Twitter @ruha9