I am a sociologist of science, medicine, and technology. My first book, Refashioning Race, uses the case of cosmetic surgery to show medical knowledge and technologies shape racial categories and the body itself. In other research projects, I investigate how technologies illuminate (and reconfigure) notions of trust and responsibility, pursuing these questions in studies of GLP-1 drugs and AI. A selected description of my research projects appears below.

Refashioning bodies and norms with Ozempic

I am working on a new book project on the class of drugs popularly known as Ozempic. These drugs, also known as glucagon like peptide 1 receptor agonists (GLP-1s) or incretin mimetics, are currently prescribed for weight loss, diabetes, and an increasing number of other health-related conditions. This project asks, do GLP-1s change how people conceptualize responsibility for conditions like obesity and diabetes, how, and with what consequences for the drugs’ distribution and for health outcomes more broadly? This research aims to investigate subjective perceptions of GLP-1s and the health conditions they are approved to treat; to capture any shifts in perceptions over time; and to trace how perceptions about biomedical technologies influence policy. To capture the different meanings of GLP-1s, the project draws on analysis of media, ethnographic observation of GLP-1 related events, and interviews with lay adults, experts, clinicians and policymakers.

Race, medical knowledge, and medical practice

My first book, Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards (University of California Press, April 2023), argues that cosmetic surgery is a transnational racial project that makes race visual and embodied. Refashioning Race shows how cosmetic surgeons craft race at the macro, meso, and micro levels, illuminating how physicians re-shape racial categories and hierarchies. Beginning with an analysis of expert discourse at the macro level, it then compares how cosmetic surgeons discuss and enact appropriate appearances for patients in two multiracial societies: the U.S., a wealthy country with a long history of cosmetic surgery practice and research, and Malaysia, a middle income country with an emergent cosmetic surgery market. It then turns to surgeons’ interactions with patients, highlighting how specific technologies of visualization make race material. Focusing on the role of cosmetic surgeons as gatekeepers to and producers of desired appearances, Refashioning Race argues that cosmetic surgeons re-make race—literally, on patients’ body but also at the level of broader culture. The book calls for more attention to how forces and events working across the macro, meso, and micro scales converge to stabilize the continuing use of racial categories in medicine.

I have published several peer-reviewed articles about cosmetic surgery and race. In a paper in Ethnic and Racial Studies, I show how ethnic-specific beauty standards have proliferated in the U.S. By contrast, another paper traces the emergence of a pan-ethnic “Asian” beauty ideal  in multiethnic, Muslim-majority Malaysia, among other options. Different racial/ethnic identities and formations emerge in interaction between cosmetic surgeons and patients. Yet at international conferences and in the pages of journals, efforts to promote transnational exchange in cosmetic surgery have led to a sedimentation of a few racial types of patients, aesthetics, and techniques. This work suggests that under medical consumerism, racial categories may take on more salience, denoting aesthetic preferences as well as perceived bodily differences.

Another paper argues that cosmetic surgeons perform forms of gendered embodied labor in order to forge strong connections with patients.

In addition, I have brought qualitative research expertise to collaborations with plastic surgeons and clinical researchers, exploring how women of color experience life after mastectomy due to breast cancer.

AI and Accountability

I am Principal Investigator and social science lead on an ongoing National Science Foundation-funded project on Policy Design for Holding AI-Supported Systems Accountable. As society is becoming increasingly excited about and dependent on AI software systems, questions arise about how such software can be developed responsibly. In collaboration with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from computer science, public health/medicine, and biomedical engineering, I have written on how communication and concerns can be conveyed across the lines of computer science and social science, what actionable policy and guidance around transparency might look like (in line with current capabilities and techniques in explainable AI), and how analogues like informed consent in clinical communication yield insight into what information should be provided to end users about AI systems and for which purposes. The project facilitates interactions between policy makers and software engineers in understanding capabilities and societal expectations toward forming policy goals and connecting policy to specific quality-assurance obligations for regulatory purposes.

In addition, using interviews with software developers, regulators, clinicians, and patients/users, as well as historical and technical analysis and experiments, we investigate how stakeholders weigh risks, benefits, and trust with regard to specific AI-supported software systems. And our team is currently conducting a controlled experiment on how differing requirements for transparency (and specifically, explainability) affect the explanations for black-boxed AI systems provided by software developers.

Past Projects

I have contributed my qualitative research expertise and insights from my sociological research to collaborative work with plastic surgeons, dermatologists, and other clinicians. I have written about how online reviews diminish physician authority despite their largely positive content. In a study of patient attitudes toward the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in skin cancer screening, my collaborators and I found that patients were most receptive to AI-assistance in diagnosis within the context of a physician-patient relationship.

I am part of a collaborative survey research project that examines public attitudes toward COVID-19 mitigation efforts in Southeast Asia, headed by Prof. Sulfikar Amir. Initial results suggest that despite the challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic in 2021, workers in the informal sector in Indonesia show higher social resilience relative to other socioeconomic groups.