The resurgence of race in genomic research has renewed longstanding debates about the biological basis of human difference, raising urgent ethical questions about how science reanimates and recodes the meaning of race. In the United States, these questions are shaped by histories of racial logics that have long framed scientific inquiry into human variation. My project explores how genomics operates as a “science of excavation,” unearthing not only genetic data but also entrenched narratives of identity, purity, and lineage. Scientific practices of classification and representation are powerful acts of knowledge production that construct categories of human difference with lasting ethical and social consequences.
Building on two decades of empirical and conceptual research, and drawing from critical scholarship in anthropology, STS, and bioethics, American DNA situates genomics within distinctly American ideals of individualism, technological optimism, and scientific capitalism. It critiques how liberal frameworks of autonomy and consent in U.S. bioethics have often deflected attention from structural inequities and systemic racism embedded in genomic science. At STIAS, I seek to extend this critique by engaging with ethical traditions beyond the United States, particularly those rooted in South African histories of apartheid, reconciliation, and relational ethics. Philosophical frameworks of communitarianism and solidarity offer a powerful counterpoint to U.S. individualism, emphasizing relationality, historical accountability, and collective responsibility.
The project engages decolonial and postcolonial bioethics to interrogate how colonial legacies continue to shape global genomics and to reimagine bioethics as an enterprise centered on justice. By juxtaposing global ethical frameworks, American DNA aims to develop a historically situated, justice-oriented approach to the ethics of genomics. Writing within the intellectual community of STIAS, I aim to critically examine how genomics reflects broader social imaginaries of race, and how bioethics must transform to address the systemic inequities that genomic science both reflects and reinforces.
