Ruha Benjamin

Ruha Benjamin
Princeton University
Professor, African American Studies

Ruha Benjamin is a Professor of African American studies at Princeton University and author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier (Stanford University Press). She has studied the social dimensions of science, technology, and medicine for over fifteen years and speaks widely on issues of innovation, equity, health, and justice in the U.S. and globally. She is also a Faculty Associate in the Center for Information Technology Policy, Program on History of Science, Center for Health and Wellbeing, Program on Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Department of Sociology, and serves on the Executive Committees for the Program in Global Health and Health Policy and Center for Digital Humanities. Ruha is the recipient of many awards and honors, including the 2017 President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton.

Her second book, Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, examines the relationship between machine bias and systemic racism, analyzing specific cases of “discriminatory design” and offering tools for a socially-conscious approach to tech development. She is also the editor of Captivating Technology.

Ruha received her PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley, completed postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA’s Institute for Genetics and Society and Harvard University’s Science, Technology, and Society Program, and has received grants and fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study, American Council for Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, and California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, among others.

Her work is published in numerous journals, including Science, Technology, and Human Values; Policy & Society; Ethnicity & Health; and the Annals of the American Academy of Social and Political Science and reported on in national and international news outlets including The Guardian, National Geographic, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Nature.

Watch “Race to the Future? Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology and Society” Conversation for Change

Other Profiles you might like

A headshot of Jenny Frank smiling at the camera in front of bookshelves

Jenny Frank

Jenny Frank is the Director of the STEM Ecosystem Initiative at TIES Gobal, where she leads a community of practice of 120+ community-based STEM ecosystems across 43 states and 8

Read More »
A headshot of Maria Cuevas smiling at the camera

Maria Cuevas

Maria Cuevas is a senior at Columbia University majoring in Astrophysics. She is interested in building instruments and data-driven software to expand our ability to detect and study exoplanets. In the fall,

Read More »
A headshot of Katherine Wetmur smiling at the camera

Katherine Wetmur

Katherine Wetmur is a Managing Director and the Chief Information Officer for Cyber, Data, Risk and Resilience at Morgan Stanley; in this role, she oversees global efforts to strengthen cybersecurity,

Read More »
A headshot of Sandra Laursen smiling at the camera

Sandra Laursen

Sandra Laursen, Ph.D., is senior research associate and director of Ethnography & Evaluation Research (E&ER) at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she leads research and evaluation studies focusing on

Read More »
NCWIT
Scroll to Top