Adriana Petryna

Adriana Petryna is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the MD-PhD Program in Anthropology and serves as Graduate Chair. Her work bridges medical anthropology, science and technology studies, and environmental crisis research.

• Ph.D. in Anthropology from UC Berkeley
• M.A. in Anthropology and M.Arch. from UC Berkeley
• B.S. in Architecture from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Her research focuses on the socio-political dimensions of science and medicine, particularly in contexts of environmental disasters (e.g., Chernobyl) and global pharmaceutical trials. She examines how populations navigate state and corporate structures to claim health rights and ethical accountability.

Her recent work on wildfires and climate change explores 'horizoning'—a conceptual framework for understanding how societies reckon with irreversible ecological shifts. Publications include Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change (2022), When Experiments Travel (2009), and Life Exposed (2002, multiple awards).

• Sharon Stephens First Book Prize (2003)
• New Millennium Book Award (2006)
• Wellcome Medal (2014)
• Diana Forsythe Prize (2022)

Supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Social Science Research Council, she has held fellowships at Princeton’s Center for Human Values and the Institute for Advanced Study. At Penn, she also directs the undergraduate concentration in Medical Anthropology and Global Health.