Research on Sensitive Topics: The Case of an Ethnographic Study of Children and Gender Clinics in the US
Mar 7, 2024 — 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Laboratory for Engaged Research invites you to a lecture by Sahar Sadjadi, Assistant Professor of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University, entitled “Research on Sensitive Topics: The Case of an Ethnographic Study of Children and Gender Clinics in the US.”
Details
What is the role of critical studies of science and medicine by researchers in social science and humanities at a time when scientific authority is contested, and science denial and conspiracy theories are widespread? How can scholars of gender and sexuality emphasize the historical and cultural contingencies of our existing identity categories, when many legal strategies to defend LGBT rights rely on the claim that gender and sexual identities are innate characteristics of individuals, opposed most vocally by those intent on denying equal rights to queer people? How can intellectual critiques of liberalism’s philosophical foundations stay relevant at a time when liberal democracies are faced with the rise of illiberal authoritarian ethno-nationalisms? In this lecture, Sahar Sadjadi discusses research that engages with heavily polarized topics in shifting political landscapes through examining her own ethnography of clinical practices around gender nonconforming children in the US.
Sahar Sadjadi
Assistant professor at the department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University
Sahar Sadjadi is a medical anthropologist and assistant professor at the department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. She studied medicine at Tehran University, worked as a physician in Kurdistan, Iran and received her PhD from Columbia University. She has held research fellowships at the Graduate Center, CUNY, Paris Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton University. Her research lies at the intersection of anthropology of medicine, gender and sexuality studies and childhood studies. Her work has been published in various journals including Cultural Anthropology, Transgender Studies Quarterly and American Anthropologist and she has been interviewed for the New Yorker, Salon and France 24.