Hannah Landecker
Life Sciences Building 3802
Image © Spencer Lowell
Education
2000 Ph.D., Science and Technology Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1993 B.Sc., Cell and Developmental Biology, University of British Columbia
Bio
Hannah Landecker uses the tools of history and social science to study contemporary developments in the life sciences, and their historical taproots in the twentieth century. She has taught and researched in the fields of history of science, anthropology and sociology. At UCLA she is cross-appointed between the Institute for Society and Genetics, and the Sociology Department. She is currently working on a book called “American Metabolism,” which looks at transformations to the metabolic sciences wrought by the rise of epigenetics, microbiomics, cell signaling and hormone biology.
Landecker’s work focuses on the social and historical study of biotechnology and life science, from 1900 to now. She is interested in the intersections of biology and technology, with a particular focus on cells, and the in vitro conditions of life in research settings.
Landecker serves as co-director of UCLA’s Center for Reproductive Science Health & Education and is a senior editor at BioSocieties.
To read more about her research, please browse the publications below. She was recently interviewed by the Brown University Indy magazine, Köpfe und Ideen, Mold Magazine, Technosphere Magazine, and Theory Culture and Society. Her slightly less academic sojourns can be found in e-flux, Noema, isolarii, and several recent art catalogs such as Pakui Hardware: Shape Shifters, and Vanessa Billy: We Become/Redevenir. All her publications are available on Research Gate.
Keywords
science & technology studies; biotechnology; metabolism; epigenetics; sociology of health
Recent Awards
- Eby Award for the Art of Teaching, UCLA Distinguished Teaching Prize, 2024
- Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Invited Fellow, 2021-2022
- USC Dornsife Berggruen Institute Fellowship, 2018-2019
- Scholar’s Award, American Council of Learned Societies, 2013
- Suzanne J. Levinson Book Award, History of Science Society, 2008
- Best book in the history of the life sciences, for Culturing Life
Selected Publications
Landecker, H., “The Underlying Condition as Disease Ecology: Covid-19 and the Anthropogenic Body of Infection” in S. Opitz, A. Wiegeshoff, and C. Mezes, eds., Ecologies of Disease Control: Spaces of Health Security in Historical Perspective, Pittsburgh University Press, forthcoming 2025.
Haraoui, L.P., A. Rizk, and Landecker, H., “States of Resistance: Nosocomial and Environmental Approaches to Antimicrobial Resistance in Lebanon” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 46, 28 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-024-00624-8
Landecker, H. “Cell Freezing and the Biology of Inexorability: Cryoprotectants and Chemical Time” BioSocieties 19:635-655, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-024-00331-4
Landecker, H. “Life as Aftermath: Social Theory for an Age of Anthropogenic Biology” Science, Technology and Human Values, Advance Online Publication, 2024.https://doi.org/10.1177/01622439241233946
Landecker, H. “How the Social Gets Under the Skin: From the Social as Signal to Society as a Metabolic Milieu” Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (KZfSS) 76:745-767, 2024. (Special issue: Biosocial and evolutionary approaches in sociology) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-024-00951-5
Le Goff, A., R. Jeffries Hein, A.N. Hart, I. Roberson, and Landecker, H., “Anticipating in vitro Gametogenesis: Hopes and concerns for IVG Among Diverse Stakeholders” Stem Cell Reports 19(7):933-945, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2024.05.002
Landecker, H. and A. T. Clark, “Human Embryo Models Made from Pluripotent Stem Cells are not Synthetic. They Aren’t Embryos, Either” Cell Stem Cell 30:1290-1293, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2023.09.006
Landecker, H., “The Food of our Food: Medicated Feed and the Industrialization of Metabolism” 56-85 in H. Paxson, ed., Eating Beside Ourselves: Thresholds of Food and Bodies, Duke University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478024064-003
Campbell-Staton, S.C., R.H. Walker, S.A. Rogers, J. De Léon, Landecker, H., W. Porter, P.D. Matthewson, R.A. Long, “Physiological Costs of Undocumented Human Migration Across the Southern United States Border” Science 374(6574): 1496-1500, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abh1924
Neubauer, C. and Landecker, H., “A planetary health perspective on synthetic methionine” Lancet Planetary Health 5(8):E560-E569, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00138-8
Landecker, H., “Trace Amounts at Scale: Arsenicals, Medicated Feed, and the ‘Western Diet’” 187-213 in A.N.H. Creager and J.P. Gaudillière eds, Risk at the Table: Food Production, Health, and the Environment, Berghahn Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3167/9781789209440
Le Goff, A., P. Allard, and Landecker, H., “Heritable Changeability: Epimutation and the Legacy of Negative Definition in Epigenetic Concepts” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Part A 86:35-46, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2020.12.006
Bazzi, W., A. Abou Fayad, A. Nassar, L.P. Harouri, V.K. Nguyen, O. Dewachi, G. Abu Sitta, H.Landecker, A. Abbara, C.W. Knapp, M. McEvoy, M. Zaman, P.G. Higgins, G. Matar, “Heavy Metal Toxicity in Armed Conflicts Potentiates AMR in A. baumannii by Selecting for Antibiotic and Heavy Metal Co-resistance Mechanisms” Frontiers in Microbiology 11: article 68; 10.3389/fmicb.2020.00068, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2020.00068
Khan, A., O. Plana-Ripoll, S. Antonsen, J. Brandt, C. Geels, H. Landecker, P. Sullivan, C. Bøcker Pedersen, A. Rzhetsky “Environmental pollution is associated with increased risk of psychiatric disorders in US and Denmark,” PLOS Biology. Aug 20;17(8):e3000353, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000353
Landecker, H., “A Metabolic History of Manufacturing Waste: Food Commodities and Their Outsides” Food, Culture and Society 22(5):530-547, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/15528014.2019.1638110
Lappé, M., R. Jeffries Hein, Landecker, H., “Environmental Politics of Reproduction” Annual Review of Anthropology 48:133-150, 2019.Landecker, H., “Antimicrobials Before Antibiotics: War, Peace, and Disinfectants,” Palgrave Communications 5:45, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011346
Kelty, C., Landecker, H., “Outside In: Microbiomes, Epigenomes, Visceral Sensing, and Metabolic Ethics” pp. 53-65 in After Practice: Thinking through Matter(s) and Meaning Relationally, edited by The Laboratory for the Anthropology of the Environment and Human Relations, Berlin: Panama Verlag, 2019.
Landecker, H., “On the Odor of Rancid Butter, A Twenty-First Century Update” History of Anthropology Newsletter 43, 2019: (Special Focus: Canguilhem’s Milieu Today). Reprinted in Electric Brine, J. Teets ed., Archive Books, 2021.
Landecker, H., “The Matter of Practice in the Historiography of the Experimental Life Sciences” 1-22 in M. Dietrich and M. Borrello, eds. Handbook of the Historiography of Biology, Springer, 2018.
Landecker, H., “Metabolism, Autonomy, Individuality” 225-248 in L. Nyhardt and S. Lidgard, eds. Biological Individuality: Integrating Scientific, Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, Chicago University Press, 2017.
Landecker, H., “Antibiotic Resistance and the Biology of History” Body and Society 22(4):19-52, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X14561341