Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences

Adam Biggs is a historian of race, medicine, and civil rights. His research explores how early-twentieth century Black doctors used professional medicine to advocate for racial justice and examines how understandings of academic and professional merit are shaped by racial politics.

Matthew Wolf-Meyer is an anthropologist and historian of science and medicine in the U.S. Wolf-Meyer marries ethnographic research with patients, their families, and patient support networks, participant-observation of scientists, clinicians, and health care workers, and archival analysis of scientific monographs and public policies to show how thorny, contemporary problems have developed out of longstanding ideas about health and disease, disability and normalcy, and nature and civilization.

Currently an associate professor in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I acquired my doctorate from the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London (UCL).

Professor Nancy Campbell is the Department Head in the Department of Science and Technology Studies. She is a historian of science, technology, and medicine who focuses on legal and illegal drugs, drug science, policy, and treatment, harm reduction, and gender and addiction. Her most recent book is OD: Naloxone and the Politics of Overdose (MIT Press, 2020). “How have ideas about drugs and drug addiction changed over time? What do we know about drug addiction, and how do we know it? Why do we have the drug policies that we do?” said Campbell.

Jennifer Cardinal is a cultural anthropologist who studies community-led sustainable development and climate justice. Her ethnographic research extends a political ecology approach to questions about the precarious relationships, practices, and discourse at the intersection of community and sustainability. She teaches methodological and conceptual tools to understand local meanings and practices in the context of global systems.

Jim Malazita (Ph.D. Drexel University) is Associate Professor of Science & Technology Studies and the Associate Director of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences Program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He studies the co-production of technological and social elements of games and creative software, with a particular focus on game engines, gender, and race.

I study the history and culture of technology. My most recent book, For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open Source Software Revolution (MIT Press, 2017), explores the history of software whose source code is freely shared, and the cultural and economic impact of such software. I am also interested in "new" military history.

I am an anthropologically-oriented STS scholar working at the intersection of community engagement, design research and pedagogy, and environmental justice. My scholarly work on the contexts that enable effective collaboration, communication, and engagement is rooted in interdisciplinary research that centers both STS and non-academic perspectives.

Abby Kinchy is a sociologist, working in the interdisciplinary field of science and technology studies (STS). Her research and teaching focus on the politics of environmental pollution and the relationship between science and democratic engagement. She became the head of the STS Department at Rensselaer in January 2023.