Joanna Radin

Joanna Radin is an Associate Professor of History of Medicine and a core member of Yale's Program in History of Science and Medicine. She holds affiliations with the Departments of History, Anthropology, and American Studies, as well as with programs in Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Religion and Modernity. Her work bridges history, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS) to explore biomedical futures and the social implications of cryopreservation.

• PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2012
• M.S., University of Pennsylvania, 2007
• M.S., Cornell University, 2004
• B.S., Cornell University, 2002

Radin’s research spans global histories of biology, ecology, and biomedical technology, with a focus on feminist, Indigenous, and queer STS. She examines how frozen biological materials (blood, tissue, cells) shape imaginaries of life, death, and scientific ethics. Her award-winning monograph Life on Ice: A History of New Uses for Cold Blood (2017) traces the history of low-temperature biobanking, while her co-edited volume Cyropolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World (2017) interrogates cryopreservation’s ethical and environmental implications.

Her recent articles, such as Cryopolitics After Ice (2024) and The Speculative Present (2019), analyze cryopreservation’s role in climate change, postcolonial technoscience, and science fiction. She co-edits the Science as Culture series at University of Chicago Press and contributes to debates on biomedical computing, indigenous data sovereignty, and technoscientific ethics.