Biography

Dwaipayan Banerjee is an Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at MIT. His research centers on the intellectual labor of thinkers and practitioners from the Global South, challenging scholars to reorient how we understand the past and future of science, technology, and medicine. Banerjee's work spans health and medicine, pandemics, biological materials, and computing, with a focus on South Asia. He is the author of "Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi" (Duke University Press, 2020) and co-author of "Hematologies: The Political Life of Blood in India" (Cornell University Press, 2019).

Research

Banerjee's current book project, "Computing in the Time of Decolonization," explores the history of computing in India during the early years after independence. This research investigates the role of computing in India's early postcolonial dreams of sovereignty in science and technology, the challenges faced by India's technocrats in their quest for self-reliant technological manufacturing, and the reasons for abandoning this vision. The project illuminates global hierarchies that continue to underpin the world of computing today.

His recent work has also focused on the global crisis of Covid-19, addressing the urgent need for social science perspectives during the ongoing pandemic. This research examines vaccine politics, the historiography of pandemics, and the moral complexities surrounding end-of-life care in the context of India's Covid-19 response.

Publications

Computing in the Time of Decolonization (manuscript under review, Princeton University Press)

Enduring Cancer: Life, Death, and Diagnosis in Delhi (Duke University Press, 2020)

Hematologies: The Political Life of Blood in India (Cornell University Press, 2019, co-authored with Jacob Copeman)

"The Mystery of the Missing Pandemic," History of the Present, 13(1): 57-70, 2023

"Provincializing Bioethics: Dilemmas of End-of-Life Care in an Indian ICU," American Ethnologist, 49(3): 318-331, 2022

"From Internationalism to Nationalism: A New Vaccine Apartheid," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 41(3): 312-317, 2021

Teaching

STS.086 Cultures of Computing

STS.012 Science in Action: Technologies and Controversies in Everyday Life

STS.464 Computing from the Global South

STS.075 Technology and Culture

STS.008 Technology and Experience

STS.417 STS Seminar on the Global South

Awards

News