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Janelle Lamoreaux
I am a sociocultural anthropologist focused on reproduction, gender and environmental health. My approach combines social and historical studies of science with medical anthropology.
My first single-authored monograph, Infertile Environments: Epigenetics and Reproductive Toxicology in China is an ethnographic study of gene-environment interaction research conducted by toxicologists who focus on male reproductive health. It is primarily about how toxicologists make knowledge through epigenetic research practices that bring into being various forms of the environment. But it is also about how environmental health scientists and activists make sense of the increasingly toxic worlds in which they live. Based on fieldwork conduced in Nanjing during a time when protecting the natural environment was not explicitly a part of everyday concerns, but the amount of toxic exposures faced by people in China was clearly growing, my research approaches toxicity as a material and existential condition in which people struggle to make sense of the embodied, and potentially inheritable consequences of political-economic policies and distributed social hierarchies.
In addition to the book I have two related articles about cross-cultural understandings of toxicity: one in Cultural Anthropology about variations in epigenetic understanding of personhood and the "maternal environment," and another in Cross Currents about the harm of endocrine disrupting chemicals. I have also contributed to various online forums on the topic, including a Somatosphere post, a Fieldsights post, and an author interview.
I am co-editor of the updated edition to the Routledge Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society (with Sahra Gibbon, Barbara Prainsack and Stephen Hilgartner). The Handbook provides an overview of classic and emergent topics in the social studies of (post-)genomics. This includes a chapter I authored on Gendered Bioeconomies.
I am part of a collaborative research effort around the theme Reproducing the Environment, co-organized with Katharine Dow from University of Cambridge. We are exploring how reproductive technologies (broadly defined) are used to mitigate environmental problems, as well as questions about how and why environmental issues are often framed through questions of reproduction and future generations. We have written a book review essay on reproductive environmental justice entitled "Situating Kinmaking and 'the Problem of Population'," forthcoming in Environmental Humanities. The Reproducing the Environment initiative is now being conducted in conjunction with the Wellcome Trust funded Changing In/Fertilities project, of which I am a network participant.
I am also a participant in the Wellcome Trust funded biosocial birth cohort network, which examines and utilizes birth cohort studies as reflexive method, and working with organizer of the network, Dr. Sahra Gibbon, on how integernational ethnography rethinks kinship, especially in relation to chemical toxicity. I recently published an essay on this topic on Somatosphere.
I am currently conducting exploratory on two next projects. The first, the ART of extinction, explores the growing collection and storage of gametes in the name of conservation and future reproduction. The second is historical and ethnographic research on sensory processing or sensory integration disorder. I am especially interested in the development of ideas about non-/normative sensory experience as well as the medicalization and biologization of such sensory differences. Both have been supported by School of Anthropology Faculty Small Grants.
My first single-authored monograph, Infertile Environments: Epigenetics and Reproductive Toxicology in China is an ethnographic study of gene-environment interaction research conducted by toxicologists who focus on male reproductive health. It is primarily about how toxicologists make knowledge through epigenetic research practices that bring into being various forms of the environment. But it is also about how environmental health scientists and activists make sense of the increasingly toxic worlds in which they live. Based on fieldwork conduced in Nanjing during a time when protecting the natural environment was not explicitly a part of everyday concerns, but the amount of toxic exposures faced by people in China was clearly growing, my research approaches toxicity as a material and existential condition in which people struggle to make sense of the embodied, and potentially inheritable consequences of political-economic policies and distributed social hierarchies.
In addition to the book I have two related articles about cross-cultural understandings of toxicity: one in Cultural Anthropology about variations in epigenetic understanding of personhood and the "maternal environment," and another in Cross Currents about the harm of endocrine disrupting chemicals. I have also contributed to various online forums on the topic, including a Somatosphere post, a Fieldsights post, and an author interview.
I am co-editor of the updated edition to the Routledge Handbook of Genomics, Health and Society (with Sahra Gibbon, Barbara Prainsack and Stephen Hilgartner). The Handbook provides an overview of classic and emergent topics in the social studies of (post-)genomics. This includes a chapter I authored on Gendered Bioeconomies.
I am part of a collaborative research effort around the theme Reproducing the Environment, co-organized with Katharine Dow from University of Cambridge. We are exploring how reproductive technologies (broadly defined) are used to mitigate environmental problems, as well as questions about how and why environmental issues are often framed through questions of reproduction and future generations. We have written a book review essay on reproductive environmental justice entitled "Situating Kinmaking and 'the Problem of Population'," forthcoming in Environmental Humanities. The Reproducing the Environment initiative is now being conducted in conjunction with the Wellcome Trust funded Changing In/Fertilities project, of which I am a network participant.
I am also a participant in the Wellcome Trust funded biosocial birth cohort network, which examines and utilizes birth cohort studies as reflexive method, and working with organizer of the network, Dr. Sahra Gibbon, on how integernational ethnography rethinks kinship, especially in relation to chemical toxicity. I recently published an essay on this topic on Somatosphere.
I am currently conducting exploratory on two next projects. The first, the ART of extinction, explores the growing collection and storage of gametes in the name of conservation and future reproduction. The second is historical and ethnographic research on sensory processing or sensory integration disorder. I am especially interested in the development of ideas about non-/normative sensory experience as well as the medicalization and biologization of such sensory differences. Both have been supported by School of Anthropology Faculty Small Grants.
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Toxicologists conducting epigenetic research in China today reconfigure preexisting models of transgenerational, biosocial relationality to reassert a sense of social, environmental, and intergenerational connectivity in a moment of increasing individualization and chemical toxicity. [epigenetics; toxicity; environment; reproduction; individualism; China]
Key themes addressed include the way genomic based DNA technologies have become incorporated into diverse arenas of clinical practice and research whilst also extending beyond the clinic; the role of genomics in contemporary ‘bioeconomies’; how challenges in the governance of medical genomics can both reconfigure and stabilise regulatory processes and jurisdictional boundaries; how questions of diversity and justice are situated across different national and transnational terrains of genomic research; and how genomics informs – and is shaped by – developments in fields such as epigenetics, synthetic biology, stem cell, microbial and animal model research.
Presenting cutting edge research from leading social science scholars, the Handbook provides a unique and important contribution to the field. It brings a rich and varied cross disciplinary social science perspective that engages with both the history and contemporary context of genomics and ‘post-genomics’, and considers the now global and transnational terrain in which these developments are unfolding.
Toxicologists conducting epigenetic research in China today reconfigure preexisting models of transgenerational, biosocial relationality to reassert a sense of social, environmental, and intergenerational connectivity in a moment of increasing individualization and chemical toxicity. [epigenetics; toxicity; environment; reproduction; individualism; China]
Key themes addressed include the way genomic based DNA technologies have become incorporated into diverse arenas of clinical practice and research whilst also extending beyond the clinic; the role of genomics in contemporary ‘bioeconomies’; how challenges in the governance of medical genomics can both reconfigure and stabilise regulatory processes and jurisdictional boundaries; how questions of diversity and justice are situated across different national and transnational terrains of genomic research; and how genomics informs – and is shaped by – developments in fields such as epigenetics, synthetic biology, stem cell, microbial and animal model research.
Presenting cutting edge research from leading social science scholars, the Handbook provides a unique and important contribution to the field. It brings a rich and varied cross disciplinary social science perspective that engages with both the history and contemporary context of genomics and ‘post-genomics’, and considers the now global and transnational terrain in which these developments are unfolding.