Interview with S. Lochlann Jain

Abstract

Prof. S. Lochlann Jain (he/him, they/them) is a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and Visiting Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. Jain is an award-winning scholar, artist, and author of three books: Injury (Princeton University Press, 2006), Malignant: How Cancer Becomes Us (University of California Press, 2013), and Things that Art (University of Toronto Press, 2019).

Jain’s work lies at the intersection of science and technology studies, history, political economy, gender and sexuality, biology, and medicine and aims to unsettle some of the deeply held assumptions about objectivity that underlie the politics and history of medical research. His book Malignant traces the contested concepts of cancer that lie at the core of debates over cause, treatment, responsibility, and national progress, aiming to show why cancer remains such an intractable medical, social, and economic problem that takes millions of lives, while it both costs and generates billions of dollars.

Jain has won numerous prizes in anthropology, medical journalism, and science and technology studies, including the Staley Prize, June Roth Memorial Award, Fleck Prize, Edelstein Prize, Victor Turner Prize, and the Diana Forsythe Prize. His work has been supported by Stanford Center for the Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and the National Humanities Center.