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Lundy Braun

Professor of Africana Studies, Pathology & Laboratory Medicine

Lundy Braun (Ph.D. 1982, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health) is a Professor of Africana Studies and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a member of the Faculty Committee on Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on: 1) the history of the global circulation of knowledge about race and technology in the 19th and 20th centuries; 2) the socio-political and economic production of invisibility about occupational disease, especially asbestos-related diseases in South Africa; and 3) the contemporary debate over race, genomics, and health inequality. She participates in national and international workshops on race, genetics, and health and is currently working on a monograph on the history of racialization of spirometry, a widely used technology for measuring lung capacity.

Selected Publications

  • Braun L  (2002). Race, ethnicity, and health: Can genetics explain disparities?  Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 45 (2): 159-74.
  • Braun L  (2003). Engaging expertise: Science education and breast cancer activism. Critical Public Health 13 (3): 191-206.
  • Braun L (2005). Spirometry, measurement, and race in the nineteenth century, J Hist Med Allied Science 60: 135-169.
  • Braun L and Kisting S (2006). Asbestos in South Africa: The social production of an invisible epidemic. Am J Pub Health 96 (8): 1386-1396.
  • Braun L  (2006). Reifying human difference:  Race, genetics, and health disparities Int J Health Services 36 (3): 557-573.
  • Braun L, Fausto-Sterling A, Hammonds E, Nelson A, Quivers W, Reverby S, Shields A  (2007). Racial categories in medical practice: Are they useful? PLOS Med 4(9):e271.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040271.
  • Braun L  (2008). Structuring silence:  Biomedical research and asbestos-induced disease in early twentieth century Britain and South Africa, Race and Class 50 (1): 59-78
  • Braun L and Hammonds E (2008) Race, populations, and genomics: Africa as laboratory, Social Science and Medicine 67: 1580-1588

 

Courses Taught

  • Health Inequality in Historical Perspective
  • Imperialism and Public Health in Africa: Past and Present
  • Race in Medicine and Public Health
  • Biological and Social Context of Disease
  • Human Biology Senior Seminar: History of Public Health
  • Environmental Health
  • General Pathology