Hannah Landecker

Hannah Landecker is a professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, holding a joint appointment in these Social Science units. She serves as Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the Division of Life Sciences and co-director of UCLA’s Center for Reproductive Science, Health and Education. Previously, she directed the Institute for Society and Genetics from 2014 to 2021 and was associate professor at UCLA from 2008 to 2017. Earlier positions include assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University from 2001 to 2008, visiting assistant professor of history of science at Harvard University in 2007-2008, and postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science from 1999 to 2001. Landecker earned her Ph.D. in Science, Technology, and Society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 and her B.Sc. (Honours) in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of British Columbia in 1993.

Her research specializes in the social and historical study of biotechnology and life sciences from 1900 to the present, focusing on the intersection of life and social sciences, including metabolism, epigenetics, microbiomics, cell signaling, hormone biology, and anthropogenic biology. She is a senior editor at BioSocieties and has served on numerous committees, including graduate education committees in Sociology and the Institute for Society and Genetics, as well as fellowship review panels for organizations such as the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Science Foundation. Major awards include the 2024 Eby Award for the Art of Teaching and UCLA Distinguished Teaching Prize, Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Future Flourishing Program (2023-2028), Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin Fellowship (2021-2022), USC Dornsife Berggruen Fellowship (2018-2019), American Council of Learned Societies Scholar’s Award (2013), and Suzanne J. Levinson Book Prize from the History of Science Society (2008) for Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies (Harvard University Press, 2007). Key publications encompass “Life as Aftermath: Social Theory for an Age of Anthropogenic Biology” (Science, Technology, and Human Values, 2025), “Antibiotic Resistance and the Biology of History” (Body & Society, 2016), “Food as Exposure: Nutritional Epigenetics and the New Metabolism” (BioSocieties, 2011), and “From Social Structure to Gene Regulation, and Back: A Critical Introduction to Environmental Epigenetics for Sociology” (Annual Review of Sociology, 2013). She has delivered keynote lectures at institutions including Princeton University, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Cambridge University, and the University of Lyon.

Professional Email: landecker@soc.ucla.edu