Events

Past Event

My Data, My Self: A Century of Self-Tracking Health Technologies

May 25, 2017
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
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Science History Institute, 315 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia

From women using body temperature to track their fertility, to the devices used to monitor diabetes, to recent debates about genetic tests for disease risk, this talk will explore the technologies we use to ask and answer questions about our health and what we do (and don’t) come to know about ourselves in the process.

Registration is required; please visit the website for more details.

This event is sponsored by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Speakers:

Deanna Day is a historian of health, technology, and media who currently works as a research fellow in the Center for Applied History at the Science History Institute. She is writing a book about the history of the thermometer in American medicine, showing how it laid the intellectual and material foundations for our current approach to self-tracking technologies. She lives in Los Angeles.

Amanda L. Mahoney is the Public History Fellow in Twentieth-Century Clinical Medicine at the Science History Institute. Her work explores the relationship among patients, clinicians, and technology with a focus on nursing and the material culture of the clinic. She is currently developing an exhibition related to the role of data in health care.

Ramya M. Rajagopalan is a research fellow in the Beckman Center at the Science History Institute. Her work explores the social and cultural dimensions of emerging developments at the nexus of genetics, biomedicine, and health. Currently, she is examining debates about human diversity and social identity spurred by genome technologies and the role of “big data” in clinical diagnosis and treatment.