Ruha Benjamin
Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies
Email: ruha@bu.edu
Phone: 617-358-6280
B.A. Sociology and Anthropology, Spelman College; M.A., Ph.D. Sociology, University of California Berkeley
Ruha Benjamin’s teaching and research interests are in the areas of science, medicine and biotechnology; the construction and naturalization of racial and gender taxonomies; science policy, public health and social theory. She is currently completing a book, People’s Science: Bodies & Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press 2013),which examines ethnoracial, gender, class, and disability politics as a constitutive feature of stem cell research. In a second project, Provincializing Science: Mapping & Marketing Ethnoracial Diversity in the Genomic Age (in preparation), she is investigating how newly derived genetic classifications are impacting social groupings in three countries (India, Mexico, and South Africa), with attention to how commercial forces are driving the creation of ethnic drug markets as a proxy for public health. Professor Benjamin joins BU from a two year fellowship in the Center for Society and Genetics at UCLA. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and UC Berkeley Townsend Center for the Humanities.