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Lundy Braun

Royce Family Professor in Teaching Excellence and Director of Undergraduate Studies

Lundy Braun (Ph.D. 1982, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health) is a Professor of Africana Studies and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a member of the Science and Technology Studies Program at Brown. Her current research focuses on: 1) the history of global exchanges of knowledge about race, science, and medical technologies in the 19th and 20th centuries; 2) the socio-political and economic production of invisibility of asbestos-related diseases in South Africa; and 3) the contemporary debate over race, genomics, and health inequality. She has participated in national and international workshops on race, genetics, and health. She is currently working on a monograph, Racialization of Lung Capacity Measurements: A History of Spirometry, 1840 to the Present, that explores how race became attached and embedded in this widely used technology for measuring lung function.

Selected Honors and Awards

  • Royce Family Professor in Teaching Excellence, 2010-2013
  • Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Advising and Mentoring in the Biological Sciences, 2010
  • National Science Foundation Scholar Award, 2009-2010
  • Dean’s Excellence in Teaching Award, Brown University School of Medicine, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
  • Fulbright Senior Specialist Award, 2003 Harriet W. Sheridan Award for Distinguished Contribution to Teaching and Learning, 2003
  • The Onyx Class of 2001 Award, Brown University, 2001
  • Profiles in Competence Award, Brown University School of Medicine, 2000
  • The Onyx Class of 1999 Award, Brown University, 1999
  • Faculty Teaching Award, Brown University Medical School, 1999
  • Award for Science Training of Breast Cancer Activists, National Breast Cancer Coalition - 1997
  • Gender Equity Award, American Medical Women's Association, Brown University chapter, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997
  • Society of Sigma Xi, 1994
  • Medical Faculty Teaching Award, 1992
  • Mary Putnam-Jacobi Award, Brown University Women in Medicine, 1989

Selected Publications

  • Braun L  (2002). Race, ethnicity, and health: Can genetics explain disparities?  Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 45 (2): 159-74.
  • Braun L  (2003). Engaging expertise: Science education and breast cancer activism. Critical Public Health 13 (3): 191-206.
  • Braun L (2005). Spirometry, measurement, and race in the nineteenth century, J Hist Med Allied Science 60: 135-169.
  • Braun L and Kisting S (2006). Asbestos in South Africa: The social production of an invisible epidemic. Am J Pub Health 96 (8): 1386-1396.
  • Braun L  (2006). Reifying human difference:  Race, genetics, and health disparities Int J Health Services 36 (3): 557-573.
  • Braun L, Fausto-Sterling A, Hammonds E, Nelson A, Quivers W, Reverby S, Shields A  (2007). Racial categories in medical practice: Are they useful? PLOS Med 4(9):e271.doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040271.
  • Braun L  (2008). Structuring silence:  Biomedical research and asbestos-induced disease in early twentieth century Britain and South Africa, Race and Class 50 (1): 59-78
  • Braun L and Hammonds E (2008) Race, populations, and genomics: Africa as laboratory, Social Science and Medicine 67: 1580-1588
  • Braun L and L Phoun. (2010) HPV Vaccination Campaigns: Masking Uncertainty, Erasing Complexity, In editors Keith Wailoo, J Livingstone, S Epstein R Aronowitz, Vaccinating Against Cancer: Sex, Science, and the Politics of Medicine’s Simple Solutions. Johns Hopkins University Press, in press)

Courses Taught

  • Health Inequality in Historical Perspective
  • Imperialism and Public Health in Africa: Past and Present
  • Race in Medicine and Public Health
  • Biological and Social Context of Disease
  • Human Biology Senior Seminar: History of Public Health
  • Environmental Health
  • General Pathology