Alka Menon
Alka V. Menon studies the relationship between medicine, technology, and society, with a focus on race and gender. Her book projects examine how medicine, in conjunction with other forces, shapes what society thinks of as ideal bodies. Her award-winning first book, Refashioning Race: How Global Cosmetic Surgery Crafts New Beauty Standards (University of California Press, 2023), shows how cosmetic surgeons re-shape racial categories on the body and at the level of broader culture, drawing on fieldwork in the U.S. and Malaysia. She is currently working on a book project about GLP-1 drugs (“Ozempic”) and expanding notions of health in the U.S. A second line of her work investigates AI, responsibility, and trust in health settings. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and Social Science Research Council.
Menon received her B.A. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. Her research and teaching interests span sociology, science and technology studies, racial and ethnic studies, gender studies, law & society, and qualitative research methods.