Alondra Nelson

Nelson earned a bachelor of science degree in anthropology, magna cum laude, from the University of California, San Diego, in 1994. At UC San Diego, she was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University in 2003.

From 2003 to 2009, she was assistant professor and associate professor of African American Studies and Sociology at Yale University,[2][3] where she was the recipient of the Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching Excellence and a Faculty Fellow in Trumbull College.[4] At Yale, Nelson was the first African American woman to join the Department of Sociology faculty since its founding 128 years prior.

Nelson was recruited to Columbia from Yale in 2009 as an Associate Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies. She was the first African American to be tenured in the Department of Sociology at this institution. At Columbia, she directed the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, was the founding co-director of the Columbia University Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Council,[5] and was Dean of Social Science[6] for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.[7] As dean, Nelson led the first strategic planning process for the social sciences at Columbia University,[8] successfully restructured the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and helped to establish several initiatives, including the Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity program,[9] the Eric J. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights,[10] the June Jordan Fellowship Program,[11] and the Sabancı Center for Turkish Studies.[12] She left the Columbia University faculty in June 2019 to assume the Linder chair at the Institute for Advanced Study.

In February 2017, the Social Science Research Council's Board of Directors announced its selection of Nelson as the 94-year old organization's fourteenth President and CEO, succeeding Ira Katznelson.[13] She is the first African American and first person of color to lead the Social Science Research Council. Nelson's tenure as SSRC president has been hailed as "transformative," particularly in the areas of intellectual innovation and collaboration.[14]

Her appointment as the Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study began on July 1, 2019.[15]

Nelson serves on the boards of directors of the Data and Society Research Institute,[16] the American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Teagle Foundation, the Center for Research Libraries, and The Brotherhood Sister Sol. She is also a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. Nelson is a member of the Board for African-American Affairs at Monticello. In 2019, she was appointed to the advisory board of the Obama Presidency Oral History Project. Nelson is president-elect of the Society for Social Studies of Science. Past chair of the American Sociological Association's Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section, Nelson is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society,[17] the Sociological Research Association and the National Academy of Medicine, and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. She has been a member of the World Economic Forum Network on AI, the Internet of Things and the Future of Trust and the Council on Big Data, Ethics, and Society. Nelson has served on the Executive Committee of the Eastern Sociological Society and the Board of Governors for the Society of Fellows at Columbia.[18] From 2014 to 2017, she was Academic Curator for the YWCA of New York City and was also a member of its Program Committee.

Nelson has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society at the London School of Economics, the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, the Bavarian American Academy, and the International Center for Advanced Studies at New York University. She serves on the editorial board of Social Studies of Science. Nelson served on the jury for the inaugural Aspen Words Literary Prize and is a juror for the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program.

On January 15, 2021, it was announced that Joe Biden would nominate Nelson to serve as deputy director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy for science and society.[19]

Nelson researches and writes about the intersections of science, technology, medicine and inequality.[20][21] Named one of "13 Notable Blacks In Technology" by Black Voices,[22] she established the Afrofuturism on-line community in 1998 and edited an eponymous special issue of the journal Social Text in 2002.[23] She is among a small group of social theorists of Afrofuturism. Particularly, her essay "Future Texts" lends insight onto the inequitable access to technologies. Nelson explained Afrofuturism as a way of looking at the subject position of black people that covers themes of alienation and aspirations for a better future. Additionally, Nelson notes that discussions around race, access, and technology often bolster uncritical claims about the "digital divide." The digital-divide framing, she argues, may overemphasize the role of access to technology in creating inequality as opposed to other drivers of inequality. Noting the racial stereotyping work of the "digital divide" concept, she writes, "Blackness gets constructed as always oppositional to technologically driven chronicles of progress."[24]

She is co-editor with Keith Wailoo and Catherine Lee of Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History. Nelson is also co-editor, with Thuy Linh N. Tu, of Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life, one of the first scholarly works to examine the racial politics of contemporary technoculture.[25][26]

Her book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination was praised by Publishers Weekly as deserving "commendation for its thoughtfulness and thoroughness," was noted as "a much-needed and major work that will set the standard for scholars" by the American Historical Review, and was hailed by leading scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. as "a revelation" and "a tremendously important book." Body and Soul was recognized with several awards, and inspired an October 2016 special issue of the American Journal of Public Health on the Black Panther Party's health legacy, which Nelson co-curated.

Kirkus Reviews described The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome, Nelson's book about the uses of genetic ancestry testing in Black communities, as a "meticulously detailed" work that "adds another chapter to the somber history of injustice toward African-Americans, but... one in which science is enriching lives by forging new identities and connections to ancestral homelands." Writer Isabel Wilkerson hailed the book as the work of "one of this generation's most gifted scholars."The Social Life of DNA was named a finalist for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction and a Favorite Book of 2016 by The Wall Street Journal. The book was published in an Arabic translation in 2017.

Her writing and commentary have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe,[27] The Guardian (London) and The Chronicle of Higher Education,[28] among other publications.

Nelson has received several awards over the course of her career:

• Phi Beta Kappa, University of California, San Diego, 1994
• Henry Mitchell MacCracken Fellowship and Dean's Fellowship, New York University, 1995
• Trustee Dissertation Fellowship, Skidmore College, 2000
• Ann E. Plato Predoctoral Fellowship, Trinity College, 2001
• Non-Resident Fellow, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, 2005
• Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching Excellence, Yale University, 2006
• Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Diversity Fellowship, 2006
• Career Enhancement Fellowship for Junior Faculty, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2006
• Junior Faculty Fellowship, Yale University, 2006
• Fellow, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, 2007
• Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2011
• Mirra Komarovsky Book Award for Body and Soul, 2012
• American Sociological Association Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award for Body and Soul, 2012
• Letitia Woods Brown Award for Body and Soul, 2012
• Best Book Award from the Association for Humanist Sociology for Body and Soul, 2012
• C. Wright Mills Award (Finalist) for Body and Soul, 2012
• Just Wellness Award from the Third Root Community Health Center for Body and Soul, a "work at the nexus of healing and social justice," 2013[29]
• African American Culture and Philosophy Award, Purdue University, 2014
• Visiting Fellow, Academy of Advanced African Studies, University of Bayreuth, 2014
• A Favorite Book of 2016, The Wall Street Journal for The Social Life of DNA, 2016
• Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction (Finalist) for The Social Life of DNA, 2017
• Elected to Membership, Sociological Research Association, 2017
• Elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2018
• Elected as a Fellow of The Hastings Center, 2018
• Top 35 Women in Higher Education, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, 2020[30]
• Diana Forsythe Prize (Honorable Mention) from the Committee for the Anthropology of Science, Technology & Computing and the Society for the Anthropology of Work of the American Anthropological Association for The Social Life of DNA, 2020
• Morison Prize, recognizing outstanding individuals who combine humanistic values with effectiveness in practical affairs, particularly in science and technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2020
• Elected to Membership, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2020[31]
• Elected to Membership, American Philosophical Society, 2020[32]
• Elected to Membership, National Academy of Medicine, 2020[33]

She was born in Bethesda, Maryland in 1968, the daughter of Robert Nelson, a career member of the U.S. Navy and retired Master Chief Petty Officer, and Delores Nelson, a cryptographer and systems analyst for the U.S. Army and Department of Defense. The eldest of four siblings, she was raised in San Diego, California. Nelson has one sister, Andrea, and two brothers, Robert and Anthony. She attended the University of San Diego High School, a private co-educational college preparatory school.

She is married to Garraud Etienne, a non-profit executive. She was previously married to Ben Williams, a digital editor at GQ and New York Magazine; she was subsequently romantically linked to legal scholar Randall Kennedy.[34]

• 2001. Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life. New York University Press, ed. with Thuy Linh Tu ISBN 0-8147-3604-1.
• 2002. Afrofuturism: A Special Issue of Social Text. Duke University Press, ISBN 0-8223-6545-6.
• 2011. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0-8166-7648-8.
• 2012. Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History. Rutgers University Press, ed. with Keith Wailoo and Catherine Lee, ISBN 0-8135-5255-9.
• 2016. The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome. Beacon Press, ISBN 0-8070-3301-4.

• Alondra Nelson website
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Alondra Nelson, President and CEO, Social Science Research Council
• Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Chair, Institute for Advanced Study
• Alondra Nelson profile in Columbia Magazine
• Alondra Nelson interview with The Believer