Faculty & Fellows

William Kastenberg

Professor Emeritus
Department of Nuclear Engineering

William E. Kastenberg is currently the Daniel M. Tellep Distinguished Professor of Engineering, Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Kastenberg has taught courses in risk assessment and risk management, ethics and the impact of technology on society, and nuclear reactor safety. Professor Kastenberg's research interests include the development and application of risk assessment and risk management methods for complex technological and natural systems. More recently, he has focused on ethical issues concerning the development of new technologies (e.g. biotechnology,...

Sharon Kaufman

Professor Emerita
Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society

Chair, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine
Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, UCSF
University of California, San Francisco

Sharon Kaufman is Chair, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at UCSF. Areas of research include the following:

the ways in which life-extending medical procedures in later life are changing medical knowledge and societal expectations about longevity and the time for death; the relationship of biotechnology to ethics, governance and...

Shreeharsh Kelkar

Lecturer
Interdisciplinary Studies Field
Degrees Ph.D. History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society :: MIT (2016)
M.S. Electrical Engineering :: Columbia University (2003)
B.E. Electronics Engineering :: University of Mumbai (2002) Research Areas

Social studies of algorithms, data, and AI; History and anthropology of computing; Science and technology studies; Social studies of work, labor, and expertise

Shreeharsh Kelkar is an interpretive social scientist interested in understanding how our new computing infrastructures of humans, algorithms, software, and data (or “AI”) are...

Ann Keller

Associate Professor
School of Public Health

Ann Keller is an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the School of Public Health and received her Ph.D. in political science from Berkeley. Her research focuses on the use of scientific and technical expertise in public decision making. She has published in the Public Administration Review on the question of institutional stability in managing long-lasting, hazardous wastes. Her work on the political frames operating in the debate surrounding weapons plutonium disposition appears in The Non-Proliferation Review. Recently, she has begun a study of the development and...

Jake Kosek

Associate Professor
Department of Geography

Jake's current research builds on this past work on nature, politics and difference, using conceptual insights not only from geography but also anthropology, science studies and theories of history to develop new approaches to natural history as both an object of critical inquiry and a conceptual tool. Through fine-grained, multi-sited ethnography and detailed archival research, this project examines manifestations of natural history in the present, exploring contemporary taxonomies and varieties of nature, charting their resonance and discord with fossilized formations of prior natures....

Akash Kumar

Assistant Professor
Italian Studies
Degrees Ph.D :: Columbia University (2013) Akash Kumar (Ph.D., Columbia University) is a scholar of medieval Italian literature, with particular focus on the history of science and philosophy, Mediterranean studies, and digital humanities. His first book project, Dante’s Elements: Translation and Natural Philosophy from Giacomo da Lentini to the Comedy, explores the confluence of scientific thought and the early lyric tradition that creates a vernacular intellectual identity vital to the writing of Dante’s Commedia.

Thomas Laqueur

Professor Emeritus
Department of History

Thomas Laqueur's research interests include various topics in the history of medicine and in the cultural history of biology more generally; most recent relevant publications include Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Solitary Sex, A Cultural History of Masturbation and various articles on the history of sexuality and medicine, the good death, the market in blood, smoking, autopsies and recent human rights activism.

John E. Lesch

Professor Emeritus
Department of History

Selected Publications include Science and Medicine in France: The Emergence of Experimental Physiology 1790-1855. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984)."Chemistry and Biomedicine in an Industrial Setting: The Invention of the Sulfa Drugs," in Seymour H. Mauskopf, ed. Chemical Sciences in the Modern World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp.158-215."The discovery of M & B 693 (sulfapyridine)," in Gregory J. Higby and Elaine C. Stroud, editors, The Inside Story of Medicines: A Symposium (Madison, Wisconsin: American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, 1997...

John Lie

Distinguished Professor
Department of Sociology

John Lie (pronounced "Lee") is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lie's main scholarly interest is social theory. After working on a reconceptualization of "markets," he sought to rethink the categories of modern peoplehood - race, ethnicity, and nation - which was published as Modern Peoplehood (Harvard University Press, 2004). His longstanding interest in the environment has led him to write a book on sustainability - Japan, the Sustainable Society (University of California Press, 2021) - and our inattention to and...

Kristin Luker

Professor Emeritus
School of Law
Department of Sociology

Kristin Luker is Professor of Sociology and a professor in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program, Boalt Hall School of Law. She is the author of many scholarly articles, as well as three books: Taking Chances: Abortion and the Decision Not to Contracept (1975), Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (1984) and Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (1996). She is currently at work on her fourth book, tentatively entitled Bodies and Politics, which is about sex education controversies in the United States. Professor Luker has been elected to the American Academy of...