Member Profile

Lisa Raeder

PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh, Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society

Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog

About Lisa

Lisa Raeder is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self, and Society at the University of Edinburgh, with a master’s degree in Gender Studies from Stockholm University. Her research intersects the disciplinary fields of critical theory, gender studies and medical sociology, and her PhD project investigates the role of hormonal contraceptives in the production of gender and sexuality, and conceptions of health and the self.

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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog

View all of Lisa's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.

“Un-fixing” hormones: searching for the multiple in hormonal selves

What are hormones? While biomedical notions of hormones focus on their biological functions in bodies, hormones are also cultural artifacts, shaping understandings of health, normalcy, and what it means to live “hormonally balanced lives.” These molecules activate processes across emotions and physiology, social and material worlds, mental and physical health, organic and synthetic biology, the gendered and the non-gendered, and the normal and the pathological. Thus, hormones carry multiple, sometimes conflicting meanings, and sit at the meeting point between many different biomedical and social spheres of life, making them subject to multiple kinds of knowledges (Roberts, 2007). (more…) (read more...)