Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Gregory Clancey, Asia Research Institute, Department of History, and Tembusu College, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

The years around the turn of the twenty-first century witnessed an explosion of interest in the application of new genomic technologies to biomedical research and practice: so-called “genomic medicine”. Practitioners’ histories typically trace the emergence of this field to the development of the Human Genome Project, and the resulting flood of genomic sequence data. This talk will trace a longer history that extends back as far as the 1950s, and that locates the emergence of genomic medicine at the confluence of three intersecting socio-technical trajectories: the making of genomic risk, the rise of rare diseases, and the genomicisation of drug discovery and development.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Steve Sturdy studied natural sciences at the University of Cambridge and philosophy of science at the University of Western Ontario before taking a PhD in science studies at the University of Edinburgh. Following a period of postdoctoral research at the University of Manchester, he returned to the University of Edinburgh, where he is currently Professor of the Sociology of Medical Knowledge and head of the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies subject group. His research focuses on the growth of scientific medicine from the late nineteenth century to the present, and uses insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge to examine how developments in medical science have informed and been informed by wider changes in medical practice and medical policy. He currently holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities for a project entitled Making Genomic Medicine, which aims to disentangle the scientific, technological, social and political processes that have led, over the past forty years or so, to the current ferment of activity around medical genomics.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you RSVP to Ms Tay Minghua via email: minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg.