Whether working on campus this fall or remotely, the Holtz Center continues to be a natural outlet for STS colleagues to collaborate, share ideas and support research efforts in science and technology studies. The Holtz Center recently welcomed several new members to our roster of scholars interested in science and technology studies across the UW-Madison campus. LiLi Johnson is among those members who joined us this fall. As a faculty member in Gender & Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies, her work intersects with Feminist Science and Technology Studies and cultural studies — in relation to topics of race, inheritance, and identity.
“It is exciting to join a community of scholars who are also thinking critically about these interdisciplinary questions.”, shares Johnson. “Even as an undergraduate student, I was interested in these themes and I wrote my undergraduate thesis on Discourses of Family in General Biology Textbooks. My work has continued to take up questions of with how and why certain forms of knowledge become endowed with the authority for individuals to understand themselves simply through their categorization as scientific.”.
Johnson joined the UW-Madison community in Fall 2019. At that time, she received the Anna Julia Cooper Postdoctoral Fellowship (a faculty diversity initiative) and then became a member of the faculty this past summer, as an Assistant Professor. She is also teaching Feminist Science and Technology Studies in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies this fall.
Her STS-related research focuses on race and reproduction, family and kinship, and cultural studies of science. Family Conceptions: Technologies of Asian American Family Formation, her current book project, uses interdisciplinary methods to theorize the roll of different technologies. These methods include photography and direct-to-consumer genetic testing in Asian American family formation practices from the 20th century to today.
If you are interested in becoming a member of the Holtz Center, please reach out to Lyn Macgregor, with your CV and a brief explanation of your connection to science and technology studies. All faculty and academic staff who are committed to science and technology studies through teaching, research or service are eligible to apply.
Connect with LiLi Johnson:
lili.johnson@wisc.edu
website