Andrew Lakoff is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Southern California, with joint appointments in the Departments of Sociology and Communication. He is listed among the faculty in the Department of Anthropology and directs the Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life. Lakoff received a B.A. in History and a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He completed an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical Anthropology at Harvard University from 2000 to 2002. His academic appointments include Assistant Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego (2002–2006), Associate Professor there (2006–2009), and Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard University (2008–2009). At USC, he joined as Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sociology, and Communication in 2009 and was promoted to Professor of Sociology and Communication in 2017.

Trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, Lakoff's research explores globalization processes, the history of the human sciences, contemporary social theory, and risk society. His ethnographic studies in Argentina, France, and the United States address expertise in public health and security, global pharmaceutical circulation, biological models of human behavior, visual technologies in behavioral sciences, attention deficit disorder history, antidepressants and placebo effects, and global health expertise forms. He has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2016–2017) and the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University (2006–2007), and serves as co-editor of Limn magazine. Key publications include Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency (University of California Press, 2017), Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question (co-edited, Columbia University Press, 2008), Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices (co-edited, Duke University Press, 2006), and Disaster and the Politics of Intervention (edited, Columbia University Press, 2010). Notable articles are 'Two Regimes of Global Health' (Humanity, 2010), 'The Generic Biothreat, or, How We Became Unprepared' (Cultural Anthropology, 2008), and 'Vital Systems Security: Reflexive Biopolitics and the Government of Emergency' (Theory, Culture & Society, 2015).

Professional Email: lakoff@usc.edu