I am a Visiting Scholar and Lecturer at the Science and Technology Studies Program (STS) at UC Davis. I received my PhD from the Department of Anthropology also at UC Davis. I fell in love with Philosophy of Biology when I joined Biolab back in Winter of 2014 and since then I haven’t been able to stay away from the wonderful insight and feedback its members can offer!

My Pacific Rim Research Program (PRRP) / Wenner-Gren Foundation-supported dissertation, “Lineages within genomes: Situating human genetics research and contentious bio-identities in Northern South America,” was a multi-sited ethnography about life scientists studying human diversity. The focus of that research was the production, circulation, and contestation of abstractions such as “race,” “ethnicity,” “ancestry” and “admixture” (mestizaje) in the fields of biomedicine, human biology and genetics, and socio-cultural and physical anthropology.

Currently, I am preparing my book manuscript (based on the dissertation) and producing new ethnographic and archival activities on epistemological aspects of the production of scientific knowledge. Specifically, I am analyzing research laboratories and companies in California that focus on data-intensive human genomics (both for ancestry and biomedical purposes). You can contact me at: cabarragan@ucdavis.edu.