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M. Murphy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Michelle Murphy)
M. Murphy
Born
Claudette Michelle Murphy[1]

1969[1]
Alma materHarvard University
University of Toronto
Known forRegimes of imperceptibility, environmental justice
AwardsLudwik Fleck Prize (2008 and 2019)
Scientific career
FieldsHistory of science, philosophy of science
InstitutionsUniversity of Toronto
External videos
video icon “Abduction, Reproduction, and Postcolonial Infrastructures of Data”, M. Murphy, S&F Online

M. Murphy (born 1969)[1][2][3] is a Canadian academic. They are a professor of environment and women and gender studies at the University of Toronto and co-director of the Technoscience Research Unit.[3]

Murphy is known for their work on regimes of imperceptibility, or the ways in which different forms of knowledge become visible or invisible in the scientific community and broader society. Murphy has published several books, including Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (2006) which won the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science,[4][5] Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (2012), and The Economization of Life (2017).

Early life and education

[edit]

Murphy was born in 1969[1] and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their family background includes Métis[6] and French heritage.[2]

Murphy was inspired by the work of feminists in science in the mid-eighties, including Donna Haraway and Ruth Hubbard.[6] They earned a bachelor's degree in biology, history, and philosophy of science and technology from the University of Toronto in 1992. They earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1998.[2] Their experience at Harvard led them to incorporate analysis of whiteness explicitly into their work on science.[6]

In the 1990s, Murphy worked with Evelynn M. Hammonds and her working group on race and science at MIT. From 1996 to 2007, they edited RaceSci, a website on anti-racist studies in science, medicine, and technology. With Adele Clarke and others at the Society for the Social Studies of Science, they organized panels on race and science.[6]

Career

[edit]

Murphy is interested in feminist technoscience.[6] They study the recent history of science and technology with particular attention to economics, capitalism, the environment, and reproduction, with an awareness of colonialism, feminism, gender, race, and queer theory.[6][7]

They focus on Canada,[8][9] the United States, Bangladesh, and issues around chemical exposure, environmental justice, and reproductive justice.[6][10] Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments, which they co-edited with Gregg Mitman and Chris Sellers in 2004, has been called "a foundational volume in bringing historical and social science perspectives to bear on the intersection of place and disease."[11]

Murphy is known for the concept of regimes of imperceptibility, a framework for examining the ways in which different forms of knowledge become visible or invisible within scientific communities and society:[12]

By analyzing "regimes of perceptibility", she reveals how the politics of knowledge production and the process of materialization involve obscuring awareness of certain things in order to make others more pronounced, known, and thus controllable [...] Murphy demonstrates how the power-laden raced/classed/gendered regimes of perceptibility also create "domains of imperceptibility" that may be acted upon as an inventive space.[13]

They develop these ideas in Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (2006). They trace the history of sick building syndrome (SBS), a diagnosis applied to mass health complaints by office workers for which no cause can be identified.[11] They examine the ways in which the identification of a new disease was affected by "a congeries of unlikely forces" including both scientific and social factors.[14] The identification and acceptance of SBS, an inherently uncertain diagnosis, involves gender, race, and power dynamics within "normal science."[13] They also look at the presentation of information in ways that draw on traditions from the labour and feminist movements.[11] They received the Ludwik Fleck Prize in 2008 from the Society for Social Studies of Science for this book.[4]

Murphy is also the author of Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (2012). Their starting point is the work of radical feminists in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, who advocated for alternative health techniques and feminist clinics. They place these developments in a broader framework, examining relationships between feminism, imperialism, capitalism, population control, and neoliberalism.[15] It has been praised for identifying critical junctures that were previously overlooked, and for its examination of how the "economy of reproduction" operates in both developed and developing worlds.[16]

Murphy has written several times about "distributed reproduction", a theorization of reproduction that extends beyond the individual.[17][18][19]

Their book The Economization of Life (2017) explores the 20th century rise of techniques to value life based on economic and biopolitical concerns. Murphy examines the techniques and epistemologies that have been used to describe and connect ideas of populations and economics in the United States and Bangladesh.[20][21][22] This book was awarded the Ludwik Fleck Prize, making Murphy the first person to receive the award multiple times.[23]

Murphy has also worked on the concept of "alterlife" in the ongoing aftermath of the effects of chemical industry damage especially in the Great Lakes region.[24][25][26]

Books

[edit]
  • Murphy, M. (2017). The Economization of Life. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822363453.
  • Murphy, M. (2012). Seizing the means of reproduction: entanglements of feminism, health, and technoscience. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822353362.
  • Murphy, M. (2006). Sick building syndrome and the problem of uncertainty: environmental politics, technoscience, and women workers. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822336716.
  • Mitman, Gregg; Murphy, M.; Sellers, Christopher, eds. (2004). Landscapes of exposure: knowledge and illness in modern environments. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University. ISBN 9780226532516.

Awards

[edit]
[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 "Murphy, Michelle (Claudette Michelle)". LOC Authority Records. Retrieved 5 January 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 "M. Murphy". M Murphy. Retrieved 26 February 2025.
  3. 1 2 "M. Murphy". University of Toronto Women & Gender Studies Institute. Retrieved 26 February 2025.
  4. 1 2 3 Fischer, Michael M.J. (February 2012). "ON METAPHOR: Reciprocity and Immunity". Cultural Anthropology. 27 (1): 144–152. doi:10.1111/j.1548-1360.2012.01132.x. hdl:1721.1/95956.
  5. 1 2 "2019 Ludwik Fleck Prize". 4sonline.org. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Maroney, Stephanie (2016-11-16). "[M.] Murphy: Feminists in Science and Science Studies". Feminist Research Institute. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  7. ↑ Martin, Aryn; Myers, Natasha; Viseu, Ana (September 28, 2015). "The politics of care in technoscience". Social Studies of Science. 45 (5): 625–641. Bibcode:2015SSS....45..625M. doi:10.1177/0306312715602073. PMID 26630814. S2CID 29548363.
  8. ↑ Murphy, M. (Summer 2013). "Distributed Reproduction, Chemical Violence, and Latency". S&F Online. 11 (3). Retrieved 11 January 2017.
  9. ↑ Murphy, M. (October 2008). "Chemical Regimes of Living". Environmental History. 13 (4): 695–703. JSTOR 25473297.
  10. ↑ Stevens, Lindsay M. (December 2016). "Environmental Contaminants and Reproductive Bodies". Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 57 (4): 471–485. doi:10.1177/0022146516671569. PMID 27803265. S2CID 30571795.
  11. 1 2 3 Cohen, Benjamin (September 8, 2008). "Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Author [M.] Murphy Discusses". Science Blogs. Retrieved September 8, 2008.
  12. ↑ Cloatre, Emilie; Pickersgill, Martyn (2013). Knowledge, technology and law : at the intersection of socio-legal and science & technology studies. Oxon, New York: Routledge. pp. 191–193. ISBN 9780415628624. Retrieved 11 January 2017.
  13. 1 2 Garrison, Laura (2013-04-22). "Human Capital and its Maximization Knowledge, Resistance and Labor". The Anthropology of Biopolitics A blog about Knowledge, Power, and the Individual in Society Today. Retrieved April 22, 2013.
  14. ↑ Isenberg, Andrew C. (2014). The Oxford handbook of environmental history. Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0195324907. Retrieved 12 January 2017.
  15. ↑ Sethna, C. (22 May 2014). "[M.] Murphy, Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience". Social History of Medicine. 27 (3): 609–610. doi:10.1093/shm/hku022.
  16. ↑ Tunc, Tanfer Emin (2014). "Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience by [M.] Murphy". American Studies. 53 (1): 248–249. doi:10.1353/ams.2014.0024. S2CID 145013842.
  17. ↑ Murphy, M. (2013-09-24). "Distributed Reproduction, Chemical Violence, and Latency". The Scholar & Feminist Online. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  18. ↑ Murphy, M. (2017-04-21). "Distributed Reproduction". The Economization of Life. Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9780822373216-014.
  19. ↑ Murphy, M. (2011), Casper, Monica J.; Currah, Paisley (eds.), "Distributed Reproduction", Corpus, New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 21–38, doi:10.1057/9780230119536_2
  20. ↑ McGovern, Michael F. (September 2018). "[M.] Murphy, The Economization of Life (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 232 pp., 25 b&w illus., $24.95 pbk., ISBN 9780822363453". Journal of the History of Biology. 51 (3): 613–615. doi:10.1007/s10739-018-9536-9. ISSN 0022-5010.
  21. ↑ Gamez, Daniel; Forrest, Jacob (April 10, 2018). "The Economization Of Life By [M.] Murphy". Society + Space. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  22. ↑ Niazi, Tarique (2018-06-01). "Murphy, [M.]. The Economization of Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2017". Journal of International and Global Studies. 9 (2). doi:10.62608/2158-0669.1429. ISSN 2158-0669.
  23. ↑ King, Perry (April 8, 2019). "U of T technoscience researcher wins Fleck Prize, the first academic to win it twice". U of T News.
  24. ↑ Murphy, M. (2017-11-18). "Alterlife and Decolonial Chemical Relations". Cultural Anthropology. 32 (4): 494–503. doi:10.14506/ca32.4.02. ISSN 1548-1360.
  25. ↑ Murphy, M. (2017-10-18). "What Can't a Body Do?". Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 3 (1): 1–15. doi:10.28968/cftt.v3i1.28791. ISSN 2380-3312.
  26. ↑ Vasanth, Tara (May 5, 2024). "The Alterlife". Paprika!. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  27. ↑ Round, Judy (2010-02-25). "2010 Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecturer Announced". University of Maine. Archived from the original on 2010-03-10. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
  28. ↑ "Announcement of JHI Faculty Research Fellowships for 2016-2017". University of Toronto. Archived from the original on 2017-09-07.
  29. ↑ "Former Fellows". The Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  30. ↑ "Leading experts in science, gender studies, policy formation to be in residence". Stanford Report. June 6, 2007. Archived from the original on 2010-07-22.
  31. ↑ "Congratulations Dr. [M.] Murphy". Women and Gender Studies Institute News. September 11, 2020. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
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