My Data, My Self: A Century of Self-Tracking Health Technologies

Chemical Heritage Foundation
315 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

From women using body temperature to track their fertility, to the devices used to monitor diabetes, to recent debates about genetic tests for disease risk, this talk will explore the technologies we use to ask and answer questions about our health and what we do (and don’t) come to know about ourselves in the process.

The discussion will be led by CHF researchers Deanna Day, Amanda L. Mahoney, and Ramya M. Rajagopalan. Registration is required; please visit the website for more details.

Deanna Day is a historian of health, technology, and media who currently works as a research fellow in the Center for Applied History at CHF. She is writing a book about the history of the thermometer in American medicine, showing how it laid the intellectual and material foundations for our current approach to self-tracking technologies. She lives in Los Angeles.

Amanda L. Mahoney is the Public History Fellow in Twentieth-Century Clinical Medicine at CHF. Her work explores the relationship among patients, clinicians, and technology with a focus on nursing and the material culture of the clinic. She is currently developing an exhibition related to the role of data in health care.

Ramya M. Rajagopalan is a research fellow in the Beckman Center at CHF. Her work explores the social and cultural dimensions of emerging developments at the nexus of genetics, biomedicine, and health. Currently she is examining debates about human diversity and social identity spurred by genome technologies and the role of “big data” in clinical diagnosis and treatment.

This event is sponsored by the Chemical Heritage Foundation.