CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Temmes, Maria Ellen Alexandra |
|---|---|
| Title | A Feminist Engagement with Systems Medicine |
| Summary | My PhD project examines systems medicine from a philosophy and sociology of science approach. Based on my fieldwork at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM), I describe systems medicine research and its relations to personalised medicine. The broader aim of the study is to investigate what it would mean to form feminist engagement with systems medicine. I will do this by analysing the ways in which categories such as gender are considered in molecular medicine research. This study contributes to feminist science studies and feminist new materialism. In feminist new materialism, engaging with new approaches in life sciences is seen as a beneficial undertaking when reconsidering the role of materiality in feminist theory because systems approaches avoid reductionist biological explanations. However, little attention has been given to the ways in which systems approaches are implemented in medical research. My research does not offer an evaluative analysis of FIMM’s research, but shows that focus on gender in molecular medicine research can help to further question the possibilities of researching gender differences with big data approaches. The examination of present-day practices helps to understand the epistemological challenges in explaining gender differences in diseases as such research requires large quantities of standardised biological and environmental data. Moreover, gender analysis helps to see how studying gender differences in diseases is linked to the goals of personalised medicine. I emphasise that in personalised medicine initiatives the future of healthcare is focused on individuals’ own efforts in disease prevention whereas a feminist approach would also emphasise societal inequalities as the basis for gender differences in diseases. My research shows that feminist engagement with systems medicine can help to better contextualise systems medicine research as well as stress the importance for feminist scholars to consider the current possibilities to address gendered differences in data-centric research. |
| Supervisor | Professor Judit Sándor |
| Department | Gender Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/temmes_maria.pdf |
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