MPhil in History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine (360G-Wellcome-203879_Z_16_Z)

During this MPhil course, I will undertake historical research investigating how twentieth and twenty-first century medical technologies have influenced interconnected medical, social, and political categories of the human body, including disability, race, gender. I am interested specifically in how new medical technologies that are targeted toward particular kinds of people can then contribute to the making and remaking of those kinds. For my dissertation, I propose to specifically examine the way that categories of race and ethnicity are deployed in the context of genomic medicine by using the ongoing East London Genes and Health project and its historical background as a case study. I will investigate how the immigrant, ethnic, socioeconomic, and health status of east London's Bangladeshi and Pakistani population has made it the target of a geographically-bounded genome sequencing project. By illuminating the relationship between the local and global history of genomics as a medical intervention and that of the groups of people for which and in which it is being mobilized, my research will call attention to the way old categorizations of the human body are being reimagined and reinscribed in the context of new medical technologies.