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Research
As an anthropologist working in the field of science and technology, I examine the lively visual and performance cultures that thrive in contemporary life science laboratories and classrooms. I conduct my fieldwork among an interdisciplinary group of scientists who image, model, and simulate subvisible molecular realms through computer-intensive technologies. In many ways these scientific researchers are aiming to elucidate the very material substructure of living bodies. I approach this field curious about how the work of modeling substances at the molecular scale is shaping how we make sense of life, and human and nonhuman bodies. I begin from the questions: What do we think we are made of? How do we think our bodies work?
Getting inside of these questions has extended my interests beyond the constitution of scientific facts inside of laboratories. I want to understand how in making science, scientists themselves get made. Curious about how laboratories operate as spaces for producing scientists, I’m tracking how pedagogy and training shape forms of knowing in the practical cultures of technoscience. This research extends the current literature on pedagogy and visualization in science by drawing on concerns raised in the feminist science studies literature around modes of embodiment and the roles of affect and performance in science.
In my teaching, I explore the intersections of race, gender and science as well as the craft of scientific practice and the power of facts in social worlds.
Recent Publications
Myers, Natasha (2009) 'Performing the Protein Fold', in Turkle, Sherry (ed), Simulation and Its Discontents (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Myers, Natasha (2008) 'Conjuring Machinic Life', Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 2 (1): 112-121.
Myers, Natasha (2008) 'Molecular Embodiments and the Body-work of Modeling in Protein Crystallography', Social Studies of Science 38/2: 163-199.
Myers, Natasha (2007) 'Modeling Proteins, Making Scientists: An Ethnography of Pedagogy and Visual Cultures in Contemporary Structural Biology', Ph.D. Dissertation: History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Myers, Natasha (2006) 'Animating Mechanism: Animations and the Propagation of Affect in the Lively Arts of Protein Modeling', Science Studies 19/2: Special Issue on the Future of Feminist Technoscience: 6-30.
Myers, Natasha (2005) 'Visions for Embodiment in Technoscience', in Tripp, Peggy and Linda Muzzin (eds), Teaching as Activism: Equity Meets Environmentalism (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press): 255-67.
Recent and Ongoing Activities and Events
The META Lab: Laboratory for Modes of Embodiment in Technoscience and Anthropology
Technoscience Salon: An interdisciplinary remix of science and technology studies
York's New Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies
U50 Art Meets Science: A series of events bringing York artists and scientists into conversation and collaboration.
U50 Art Meets Science Plenary Lectures
New Graduate Course: Rendering Life Itself (FGS/STS 6101) |
