Giulia Anichini is an anthropologist interested in the uses of algorithmic decision-making tools in medicine and their impact on medical categorization. She is currently working on reproductive medicine and on artificial intelligence tools used to classify embryos intended for in vitro fertilization (IVF). Her research, which targets several private and public institutions in France, aims to describe and analyze the appropriation of these tools by biologists and to understand how they intervene in the choice of the "best" embryo.
Clémence Audran is a doctoral student at EPHE, under the joint supervision of Séverine Mathieu (GSRL laboratory) and Noémie Merleau-Ponty (IRIS laboratory), Clémence Audran is writing a thesis on ethical representations surrounding human germline gene therapy, from a French perspective. She analyzes the different conceptions that structure the debate in France surrounding the genetic modification of human embryos for therapeutic purposes.
Melissa Bailar is currently Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of the Medical Humanities Program, and Executive Director of the Medical Humanities Research Institute at Rice. She earned her Ph.D. in French and Francophone studies from Rice University and has held several positions in the School of Humanities. She has published articles on literary representations of anatomy, the actress Sarah Bernhardt, the feminist poet Nicole Brossard, digital archives, and trends in higher education. Dr. Bailar has also been a PI on multiple grants supported by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Trained in genetics (ENS Lyon), statistics (University of Chicago) and epidemiology (Univ. Paris Saclay), Catherine Bourgain is a research director at Inserm and director of Cermes3 (UMR Cnrs, Inserm, Paris Cité, EHESS). She has been a research fellow in epidemiological genetics and developed statistical methods for analyzing genetic data associated with various diseases (breast cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, etc.). After training in sociology (EHESS), she joined Cermes3 in 2013 and initiated collective surveys in the sociology of science and health. She is primarily interested in genomic technologies (particularly in the field of oncology, rare and cardiovascular diseases) used as a privileged observation point to analyze the reconfigurations of research, innovation and disease management linked to the rise of digital technologies in the health fields. A member of the Inserm Ethics Committee, she has led research on health innovation and participated in research on big health data. She is a lecturer at the University of Paris Cité and the EHESS.
Florine Bourit is a Master's student in Sociology at the Université Paris Cité. She is a former student in the "Médecine-Humanités" program at ENS Ulm–PSL.
Zélia Breton is a demographer by training and currently doing a PhD in public health and epidemiology, Zélia is interested in the care and quality of life of people with endometriosis, particularly via the ComPaRe-Endometriosis cohort and the development of multidisciplinary digital therapy.
Mathieu Corteel is a postdoctoral researcher at Sciences Po's CrisisLab, at the Imagine Institute and an associate researcher at Harvard's Department of the History of Science. His research focuses on the history, epistemology, ethics and sociology of statistics and probabilities applied to health. His first book, Le Hasard et le Pathologique, was published by Presses de Sciences Po in 2020. The translation project for this work is currently supported by LIEPP and should be published by The University of Chicago Press. His second book, Neither God nor AI, a skeptical philosophy of artificial intelligence, will be published in April 2025 by La Découverte. It addresses the issue of the expropriation and exploitation of collective intelligence by AI and its applications in fields such as education, health, surveillance, work, and voting.
Jacqueline Couti works in the area of French and Francophone Studies. Her research and teaching interests delve into the transatlantic and transnational interconnections between cultural productions from continental France and its now former colonies. Her work explores constructions of gender, race, sexuality, identity politics, and nationalism. A central theme of her research is how local knowledge in the colonial and post-colonial eras has shaped the literatures, and the cultural awareness of the self, in former French colonies through specific representations of sexuality. Before coming to Rice, she taught at the University of Virginia and at the University of Kentucky. A highly regarded teacher, Couti has received several awards and she also has directed study-abroad courses in France, Morocco, and on Martinique, and she has also received grants from international foundations, such as the VolkswagenStiftung.
Emmanuel Didier is a sociologist, research director at the CNRS, member of the Maurice Halbwachs Center (ENS/EHESS) and director of the Medicine-Humanities program at the École normale supérieure - PSL. His current research focuses on the transformations in health brought about by new forms of quantification and digitalization of individuals (genome sequencing, e-health, new databases, etc.) that are developing today at the intersection of large companies and large government bodies. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Statistique et société.
Nicolas Garcelon has an engineering degree in agronomy (2000) and a PhD in public health medical informatics (2017). Since 2012, he directs the data science platform of the Imagine Institute. His research is about medical informatics and artificial intelligence for rare diseases. He developed Dr. Warehouse®, a hospital data warehouse that allows physicians to visualize, mine and analyze patient data intuitively and efficiently. He co-created in 2017 the startup codoc.
François Garnier is a director and teacher-researcher at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, head of the SPATIAL MEDIA research group at EnsadLab, dedicated to the study of new forms of mediation linked to the use of digital spaces: Virtual Worlds, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality. He has a doctorate in "Aesthetics, Sciences and Technologies of the Arts" from the University of Paris VIII where he defended his thesis "Spatial Diffusion and Three-Dimensional Digital Images" and is a member of the Sciences Arts Creation Research (SACRe- EA 7410) reception team at the University of Paris Sciences & Lettres.
Matty Hemming is writer, researcher, and teacher in the fields of feminist and queer studies, the history of healthcare, and literary studies. Her first book offers a cultural history of twentieth-century reproductive healthcare. Tentatively titled Writing Reproductive Injustice: Maternal Refusal and the History of Healthcare, the project explores how transatlantic literary writers such as Nella Larsen, Jean Rhys, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison critiqued reproductive injustices in Britain and the United States by harnessing aesthetic and political tactics of refusal. The project draws on archival materials including birth control policies, nursing handbooks, and authors’ manuscript drafts to show how writers used personal experience and historical research to produce knowledge about the racial and class stratification of reproductive healthcare that is unavailable elsewhere in the historical record.
Anne Le Goff is a philosopher and researcher at the forefront of science and technology studies and bioethics, currently based at the Institut Sup'Biotech in Paris. Previously, she was a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, until 2024. Her research explores the complex intersections of biotechnologies, contemporary biology, and ethics. With a focus on stem cell research and the germline, Anne investigates how these rapidly evolving fields challenge our understandings of and norms for life and reproduction. Her work probes the shifting conceptions of such novel bioartefacts as in vitro-derived gametes and embryos, shaped by both technoscientific advances and societal debates and practices. Anne's philosophical approach is rooted in a commitment to empirical, qualitative research. By working at the crossroads of philosophy, bioethics, and cutting-edge biotechnologies, she fosters a rich interdisciplinary dialogue and a democratic approach to biotechnologies.
Adopting a transnational and interdisciplinary perspective, Fabiola López-Durán's research and teaching focuses on the history and theory of modern and contemporary European and Latin American art and architecture. Her new book, Eugenics in the Garden: Architecture, Medicine and Landscape from France to Latin America in the Early Twentieth Century, investigates a particular strain of eugenics that, at the turn of the twentieth century, moved from the realms of medicine and law to design, architecture, and urban planning—becoming a critical instrument in the crafting of modernity. Her work analyzes the cross-pollination of ideas and mediums—science, politics and aesthetics—that informed the process of modernization on both sides of the Atlantic, with an emphasis on Latin America.
Séverine Mathieu is the Directrice d’études and has been working on assisted reproductive technologies for many years, focusing on ethical issues. She started a new fieldwork survey, observing consultations for heterosexual and lesbians couples and single woman asking for gamete gift (according to the revision of Bioethical law of 2021). Doing so, it appears that the introduction of data-centered tools designed to assist reproductive healthcare professionals in their work produce some ethical issues arising from the exchange between practicians and people asking for ART.
Kirsten Ostherr is the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English and Director of the Medical Humanities Research Institute at Rice University. Kirsten is the author of Medical Visions: Producing the Patient through Film, Television and Imaging Technologies (Oxford, 2013) and Cinematic Prophylaxis: Globalization and Contagion in the Discourse of World Health (Duke, 2005). She is founder of the Medical Humanities program and Medical Futures Lab, and has extensive experience using human centered design for patient collaboration in health technology development. Her research on trust and privacy in digital health ecosystems has been featured in Marketplace Tech on NPR, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post. She is currently writing a book called Robot Pathographies: Datafication, Surveillance, and Patient Stories in the Age of Virtual Health. Kirsten receives research support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and National Institutes of Health.
Samuel Reis-Dennis’ primary philosophical fields are normative ethics, moral psychology, and bioethics. He is interested in the ways in which social strength and weakness inform the way we feel and express moral emotions and shape our interpersonal relationships, including doctor-patient interactions. Some of his current projects focus on the nature and importance of dignity in social and political life (particularly in the context of healthcare), and on the psychology and ethics of resentment and guilt. His writing, on these topics and others, has appeared in leading philosophy and bioethics journals, including Mind, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, The Journal of Medical Ethics, and The Hastings Center Report. Before coming to Rice, he was Assistant Professor at Albany Medical College in the Department of Bioethics Education and Research. There, he was also a Clinical Ethics Consultant at Albany Medical Center.
Jae’la Solomon is a PhD graduate student in the Department of English. She did her undergraduate studies at the University of North Texas, where she studied English with a literature concentration.She would like to focus on African diasporic literature, ranging from the 19th to the 21st centuries.
Cécile Thomé holds a doctorate in sociology, specializing in the sociology of health, digital technology, gender, and sexuality. She is a research fellow at the CNRS (section 36) within the Maurice Halbwachs Center, a member of the DOCSA ("Data, Conduct, Knowledge") research axis. After completing a thesis on the effects of the spread of medical contraception on heterosexual sexuality (Iris/EHESS), she carried out postdoctoral research at INED on the study of contraceptive choices of young women in France, particularly in relation to their perception of hormonal methods. She then worked within the Labex SMS on menstrual cycle tracking applications (design, use by users, and use of data). She is now starting a research project on the digital production of lay knowledge in health, based on the study of the design and uses of applications for monitoring chronic diseases (in particular monitoring of PCOS, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes).
Miranda Waggoner is an associate professor of sociology at Rice University. Her research examines how social structure and culture shape biomedical knowledge production, medical care, and public health practice, with a particular focus on topics related to gender, reproduction, and inequality. She is author of the award-winning book The Zero Trimester (University of California Press), and her current book project examines the changing cultural, ethical, and regulatory context surrounding biomedical research in pregnancy.