Michelle Murphy

M. Murphy (born 1969) 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. Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience, and The Economization of Life (2017).

Early life and education Murphy was born in 1969 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.

They focus on Canada, the United States, Bangladesh, and issues around chemical exposure, environmental justice, and reproductive justice. 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."

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:

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. The identification and acceptance of SBS, an inherently uncertain diagnosis, involves gender, race, and power dynamics within "normal science." 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.

Murphy has written several times about "distributed reproduction", a theorization of reproduction that extends beyond the individual.

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. This book was awarded the Ludwik Fleck Prize, making Murphy the first person to receive the award multiple times.

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.

Books

Awards Geddes W. Simpson Distinguished Lecturer, University of Maine, 2010 Jackman Humanities Research Fellowship, University of Toronto, 2009 Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science, 2008 Michelle Clayman Gender Research Institute Senior Research Fellowship, Stanford University, 2007 Ludwik Fleck Prize, Society for Social Studies of Science, 2019