PhD Candidate
Communication and Science Studies
University of California San Diego

Hello!

I’m Kathryne (Kate) Metcalf, a PhD Candidate and Herbert Schiller Dissertation Fellow in the Department of Communication and the Science Studies Program at the University of California San Diego. I’m also an Assistant Editor at Big Data and Society, and a PhD Fellow at the Institute for Practical Ethics. I’m a humanistic social scientist interested in how data infrastructure shape the production of knowledge, particularly in biomedical research. My projects examine a diverse array of clinical entities and computational apparatuses, but share a commitment to critically interrogating how data-based systems structure social relations and make possible new arrangements of bodily dis/order, identity, and scientific imagination.

In a past life I was a science writer at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and I’m still passionate about science communication. I also hold an MA in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, and a BA in Literary Studies from Beloit College.

Interests

• Critical Data Studies

• Critical Infrastructure Studies

• Postgenomics and Biomedicine

• Laboratory Ethnography

• Surveillance Studies