Amit Prasad
Assistant Professor

Amit Prasad received his Ph.D. from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004. Before he joined this department he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at University of Wisconsin-Madison and on a National Science Foundation project at University of New Mexico-Albuquerque. His research focuses on transnational, global, and postcolonial transformations in relation to science, technology, and medicine, and social theory.

Research Interests

I am pursuing three lines of research.

(i) In recent times global, transnational, and postcolonial scapes of software and biotechnology development have been increasingly studied. Medical technology development and deployment has somehow remained marginal in such analyses despite the fact that in the last 30 years medical technologies have reordered the structure of medical research and healthcare all over the world. I am conducting a three-nation (US, India, and UK) study of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) in order to put into broad relief transnational and postcolonial aspects of medical technology research, development, and clinical deployment. In particular, I am analyzing the role of transnational flows and the impact of their control and regulation on medical technology development and clinical deployment.

(ii) Emergence of computer-assisted medical imaging technologies such as MRI has transformed medical visualization and diagnosis. I have analyzed how the medical gaze produced by MRI operates in radiological laboratories. I am further investigating how the medical gaze has changed with the emergence of computer-assisted medical technologies. I am also analyzing transnational networks of radiological diagnostic procedures (commonly and often pejoratively referred to as “outsourcing”).

(iii) I am also involved in another project with Srirupa Prasad (University of Missouri) to study issues of medical privacy and medical data digitization in the context of medical transcription ‘outsourcing’ to India. Through our project we are attempting to show that not only there are different institutional and power dynamics in these transnational practices of medicine, but also that these processes assign different kinds of identities and rights to people across as well as within different nation-states.

Recent Publications

“The (Amorphous) Anatomy of an Invention: The Case of Magnetic Resonance
      Imaging” Social Studies of Science, Vol. 43, No. 4, August 2007, p. 533-60.

“Social” Adoption of a Technology: Magnetic Resonance Imaging in India”
      International Journal of Contemporary Sociology
      Vol. 43, No. 2, October 2006, p. 327-355.

“Beyond Modern versus Alternative Science Debate: Analysis of Magnetic
     Resonance  Imaging Research”, The Economic and Political Weekly,
      Vol. 41, No. 3, January 2006 p. 219-227.

“Facts, Fetishes, and the Parliament of Things: Is there any Space for Critique”
      (with Srikanth Mallavarapu), Social Epistemology Vol. 20, No. 2, April-June
      2006, p. 185-199.

“Confronting the “Socialization” Barrier: Cross-Ethnic Differences in
      Undergraduate Women’s Preference for IT Education” (with Roli Varma &
      Deepak Kapur). In William Aspray and J. McGrath Cohoon (eds.) Women
      and Information Technology: Research on Under-Representation
      (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), p. 301-322.

“Scientific Culture in the “Other” Theatre of “Modern Science”: An Analysis of
      the Culture of Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research in India” Social
      Studies of Science, Vol. 3, No. 3, June 2005, p. 463-489.

“Making Images/Making Bodies: Visibilizing and Disciplining through Magnetic
      Resonance Imaging” Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 30,
      No. 2, April 2005,  p. 291-316.

Courses Taught

Science, Technology, and Society (Soc 2104)

Science, Technology, and Society (Soc 3460)

Graduate Seminar in Science, Technology, and Society (Soc 8435)

Seminar in Sociology Theory I (Soc 9187)

Seminar in Sociological Theory II (Soc 9487)

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