M. Murphy

Claudette Michelle Murphy was born in 1969 and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their family background includes Metis and French heritage.{{cite web|last1=Murphy|first1=Michelle|title=Michelle Murphy|url=https://technopolitics.wordpress.com/|website=Technopolitics Blog|accessdate=12 January 2017}}

Murphy was inspired by the work of feminists in science in the mid-eighties, including Donna Haraway and Ruth Hubbard.{{cite web|last1=Modell|first1=Amanda|title=Feminists in Science and Science Studies, Profile: Michelle Murphy|url=http://fri.ucdavis.edu/news/2016/profile-michelle-murphy.html|website=The Feminist Research Institute, UC Davis|accessdate=5 January 2017}} They earned a bachelor's degree in Biology and History and Philosophy of Science and Technology from the University of Toronto in 1992. They earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1998.{{cite web|title=Michelle Murphy Professor, Department of History and Women and Gender Studies Institute Affiliated Faculty, CSUS|url=http://munkschool.utoronto.ca/profile/murphy-michelle/|website=Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto|accessdate=5 January 2017}} Their experience at Harvard led them to incorporate analysis of whiteness explicitly into their work on science.

In the 1990s, Murphy worked with Evelynn M. Hammonds and her working group on race and science at MIT. From 1996-2007, they edited RaceSci, a website on anti-racist studies in science, medicine, and technology. With Adele Clarke and others at the Society for the Social Studies of Science, they organized panels on race and science.

Murphy is interested in asking the question "What can feminist technoscience be?" They study the recent history of science and technology with particular attention to economics, capitalism, the environment, and reproduction, with an awareness of colonialism, feminism, gender, race, and queer theory.{{cite journal|last1=Martin|first1=Aryn|last2=Myers|first2=Natasha|last3=Viseu|first3=Ana|title=The politics of care in technoscience|journal=Social Studies of Science|date=September 28, 2015|volume=45|issue=5|pages=625–641|doi=10.1177/0306312715602073|pmid=26630814|s2cid=29548363}}

They focus on Canada,{{cite journal|last1=Murphy|first1=Michelle|title=Distributed Reproduction, Chemical Violence, and Latency|journal=S&F Online|date=Summer 2013|volume=11|issue=3|url=http://sfonline.barnard.edu/life-un-ltd-feminism-bioscience-race/distributed-reproduction-chemical-violence-and-latency/|accessdate=11 January 2017}}{{cite journal|last1=Murphy|first1=Michelle|title=Chemical Regimes of Living|journal=Environmental History|date=October 2008|volume=13|issue=4|pages=695–703|jstor=25473297}} the United States, Bangladesh, and issues around chemical exposure, environmental justice, and reproductive justice.{{cite journal|last1=Stevens|first1=Lindsay M.|title=Environmental Contaminants and Reproductive Bodies|journal=Journal of Health and Social Behavior|date=December 2016|volume=57|issue=4|pages=471–485|doi=10.1177/0022146516671569|pmid=27803265|s2cid=30571795}} Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments, which they co-edited with Gregg Mitman and Chris Sellers in 2004, has been called "a foundational volume in bringing historical and social science perspectives to bear on the intersection of place and disease."{{cite web|last1=Cohen|first1=Benjamin|title=Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Author Michelle Murphy Discusses|url=http://scienceblogs.com/worldsfair/2008/09/08/sick-building-syndrome-and-the/|website=Science Blogs|accessdate=September 8, 2008}}

Murphy is known for the concept of regimes of imperceptibility, a framework for examining the ways in which different forms of knowledge become visible or invisible within scientific communities and society.{{cite book|last1=Cloatre|first1=Emilie|last2=Pickersgill|first2=Martyn|title=Knowledge, technology and law : at the intersection of socio-legal and science & technology studies|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|location=Oxon, New York|isbn=9780415628624|pages=191–193|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xiiDBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA191|accessdate=11 January 2017}}

{{quote|... by analyzing "regimes of perceptibility", she reveals how the politics of knowledge production and the process of materialization involve obscuring awareness of certain things in order to make others more pronounced, known, and thus controllable.... Murphy demonstrates how the power-laden raced/classed/gendered regimes of perceptibility also create "domains of imperceptibility" that may be acted upon as an inventive space.{{cite web|last1=Garrison|first1=Laura|title=Human Capital and its Maximization Knowledge, Resistance and Labor|url=https://anthrobiopolitics.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/knowledge-resistance-and-labor/|website=The Anthropology of Biopolitics A blog about Knowledge, Power, and the Individual in Society Today|accessdate=April 22, 2013|date=2013-04-22}}}}

They develop these ideas in Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (2006). They trace the history of sick building syndrome (SBS), a diagnosis applied to mass health complaints by office workers for which no cause can be identified. They closely examine the ways in which the identification of a new disease was affected by "a congeries of unlikely forces" including both scientific and social factors.{{cite book|last1=Isenberg|first1=Andrew C.|title=The Oxford handbook of environmental history|date=2014|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0195324907|page=91|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=26xOBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA91|accessdate=12 January 2017}} The identification and acceptance of SBS, an inherently uncertain diagnosis, involves gender, race, and power dynamics within "normal science." This raises the question "How do we come to presence the effects of capitalism in our lives, and how are those effects invisibilized?" They also look at the presentation of information in ways that drew on traditions from the labor and feminist movements. The framework they introduce can be used by anthropological researchers for complex biopolitical analysis. They received the Ludwik Fleck Prize (2008) from the Society for Social Studies of Science for this book.

Murphy is also the author of Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (2012). Their starting point is the work of radical feminists in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, who advocated for alternative health techniques and feminist clinics. They go on to place these developments in a broader framework, examining relationships between feminism, imperialism, capitalism, population control, and neoliberalism.{{cite journal|last1=Sethna|first1=C.|title=Michelle Murphy, Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience|journal=Social History of Medicine|date=22 May 2014|volume=27|issue=3|pages=609–610|doi=10.1093/shm/hku022}} It is applauded for identifying critical junctures that were previously overlooked, and for its elegant examination of how the "economy of reproduction" operates in both developed and developing worlds.{{cite journal|last1=Tunc|first1=Tanfer Emin|title=Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience by Michelle Murphy|journal=American Studies|date=2014|volume=53|issue=1|pages=248–249|doi=10.1353/ams.2014.0024|s2cid=145013842}} Murphy has said:

{{quote|sign=|source=|I've been really interested in reproductive justice as you might normally think of it in terms of questions of reproductive health, birth, family planning, and population control, but I've also been very interested in asking the question, "Why do we think we know what reproduction is? Why do we think we know where it begins and ends?" In fact there's a wonderful rich world of thinking about the relations of reproduction, in which the idea that reproduction happens in your body is actually quite new. The idea of reproduction as confined to the body dates to the 1980s. Before that reproduction was always something that happened in the aggregate or the relation.}}

Murphy continues to work on "Distributed Reproduction," a theorization of reproduction that would extend beyond the individual.

Their book The Economization of Life (2017) explores the 20th century rise of techniques to value life based on economic and biopolitical concerns. Murphy examines the techniques and epistemologies that have been used to describe and connect ideas of populations and economics in the United States and Bangladesh.{{cite journal|title=The Economization of Life Michelle Murphy|journal=Books and Journals, Spring 2017 |url=https://www.dukeupress.edu/pr/dup_cat_1478714087_DUP_S17cat.pdf|accessdate=11 January 2017}} This book was awarded the Ludwik Fleck Prize, making Murphy the first person to receive the award multiple times.{{Cite web|url=https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-technoscience-researcher-wins-fleck-prize-first-academic-win-it-twice|title = U of T technoscience researcher wins Fleck Prize, the first academic to win it twice}}

Murphy is also working on "Alterlife in the Ongoing Aftermaths of Industrial Chemicals," an examination of the transgenerational effects of environmental damage from industrial chemicals in the Great Lakes region.

• {{cite book|last1=Murphy|first1=Michelle|title=The Economization of Life|date=2017|publisher=Duke University Press Books|location=Durham N.C.|isbn=978-0822363453}}
• {{cite book|last1=Murphy|first1=Michelle|title=Seizing the means of reproduction : entanglements of feminism, health, and technoscience|date=2012|publisher=Duke University Press|location=Durham N.C.|isbn=978-0822353362}}
• {{cite book|last1=Murphy|first1=Michelle|title=Sick building syndrome and the problem of uncertainty : environmental politics, technoscience, and women workers|date=2006|publisher=Duke University Press|location=Durham, N.C.|isbn=978-0822336716}}
• {{cite book|editor-last1=Mitman|editor-first1=Gregg|editor-last2=Murphy|editor-first2=Michelle|editor-last3=Sellers|editor-first3=Christopher|title=Landscapes of exposure : knowledge and illness in modern environments|date=2004|publisher=Georgetown University|location=Washington, D.C.|isbn=9780226532516}}

• Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecturer, University of Maine, 2010{{cite web|last1=Round|first1=July|title=2010 Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecturer Announced|url=https://umaine.edu/news/blog/2010/02/25/2010-geddes-w-simpson-distinguished-lecturer-announced/|website=University of Maine|accessdate=February 25, 2010|date=2010-02-25}}
• Jackman Humanities Research Fellow, 2009-2010{{cite web|title=Announcement of JHI Faculty Research Fellowships for 2016-2017|url=https://www.humanities.utoronto.ca/announce_Faculty_Fellows_16-17|website=University of Toronto|accessdate=10 January 2017}}
• Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science, 2008{{cite journal|last1=FISCHER|first1=MICHAEL M. J.|title=ON METAPHOR: Reciprocity and Immunity|journal=Cultural Anthropology|date=February 2012|volume=27|issue=1|pages=144–152|doi=10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01132.x|url=https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/1721.1/95956/1/Fischer_On%20metaphor.pdf|hdl=1721.1/95956|hdl-access=free}}{{cite web|title=Ludwik Fleck Prize|url=http://www.4sonline.org/prizes/fleck|website=Society for Social Studies of Science|accessdate=6 January 2017|archive-date=9 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171009180054/http://www.4sonline.org/prizes/fleck|url-status=dead}}
• Michelle Clayman Gender Research Institute Senior Research Fellowship, Stanford, 2007-2008{{cite web|title=Michelle Murphy|url=http://gender.stanford.edu/people/michelle-murphy|website=Clayman Institute for Gender Research|publisher=Stanford University|accessdate=10 January 2017}}{{cite news|title=Leading experts in science, gender studies, policy formation to be in residence|url=http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/june6/clayman-060607.html|accessdate=10 January 2017|work=Stanford Report|date=June 6, 2007}}
• Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science, 2019 {{Cite web|url=https://www.4sonline.org/prize/michelle-murphy/|title = Michelle Murphy}}
• Royal Society of Canada{{cite web |title=Royal Society of Canada Class of 2020 |url=https://rsc-src.ca/sites/default/files/Class%20of%202020_2.pdf |website=rsc-src.ca |accessdate=October 28, 2020}}

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Category:1969 births

Category:Living people

Category:Historians of science

Category:Canadian philosophers of science

Category:Canadian women historians

Category:Canadian historians

Category:Canadian women philosophers

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:University of Toronto alumni

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada