Biographical Information

Jenny Reardon, Professor of Sociology and the Founding Director of the Science and Justice Research Center (Nick Gonzales/UC Santa Cruz)

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.

Research Interests

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

Previous Education/Training

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