Soraya de Chadarevian

Soraya de Chadarevian is professor in the Department of History and the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California Los Angeles. She has a Diplom in Biology and a PhD in Philosophy as well as postdoctoral training in the history of science. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, she was a senior research associate and affiliated lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge (1991–2006) where she keeps the status of an affiliated scholar. Her main area of interest are the life sciences in the twentieth and twenty-first century. Her most recent monograph Heredity under the Microscope: Chromosomes and the Study of the Human Genome (Chicago 2020) is a study of the postwar history of human heredity, told from the vantage point of chromosomes. The project was supported by a Scholar Award from the National Science Foundation (2015–2021) and has been awarded the Life Sciences Excellence in Research Award at UCLA.

During her one-month stay at the Institute she will be collaborating with Lisa Onaga in the Department III working group Proteins and Fibers: Scaffolding History with Molecular Signatures. More specifically, she is participating in a group writing-project on the history of lactase persistence across geographies and cultures.