Brooks, reflection, 2007

Brooks, reflection, 2007 Lever House, New York City, 2007. Photo: Sawad Brooks

research interests

My ethnographic and archival work is centered on the anthropology of science and technology, particularly biotechnology. My main research project “Lineages within genomes: situating human genetics research and contentious bio-identities in Northern South America” —funded by the Pacific Rim Research Program (PRRP) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research—, is a multi-sited ethnography about the articulations of biological capital with emerging forms of individual and collective identity among ethnic minorities in Colombia, South America. My ethnographic analysis focuses on the research agendas of scientists studying human diversity; specifically, I care about the production, circulation, and contestation of abstractions such as “race”, “ethnicity”, “ancestry” and “admixture” (mestizaje) in the fields of biomedicine, human biology and genetics, and socio-cultural and physical anthropology.

I received my PhD degree at the University of California, Davis (UCD) where I work as lecturer.