Talia Dan-Cohen

​Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology
Associate Director of the Center for the Humanities
research interests:
  • Sociocultural Anthropology
  • Anthropology of Knowledge
  • Science and Technology Studies
  • Social Theory
  • Economic Anthropology
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    Talia Dan-Cohen is an anthropologist of science and technology with interests that range across the history, philosophy, and social studies of science. She has conducted extensive research on the technological frontiers of the biosciences. Her more recent research questions complexity as an epistemic virtue. 

    Her book, A Simpler Life: Synthetic Biological Experiments (Cornell University Press, 2021), approaches the field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two lab at Princeton University. In these sites, Dan-Cohen examines the set of techno-epistemic practices that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. She is also the co-author of A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicle (Princeton University Press 2005, with Paul Rabinow). Dan-Cohen is currently working on a new book, entitled The Limits of Complexity, which examines the histories, uses, and abuses of complexity across several fields. 

    Selected Publications

    Books:

    2021 A Simpler Life: Synthetic Biological Experiments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    2005 A Machine to Make A Future: Biotech Chronicles, with Paul Rabinow. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Articles: 

    "What Ever Happened to the Anthropology of Science?" Annual Review of Anthropology (accepted) - coauthored with Nicolas Langlitz

    "An Entire Career in 10 Seconds': On AI in Protein Chemistry" Biosocieties (in press)

    2024 "Experimental Artifacts." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 75, no. 1: 253-274. - coauthored with Carl Craver

    2021 "The Future." Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 11, no. 2: 754-756

    2020 "I Heart Complexity." Anthropological Quarterly 93, no. 4: 709-727

    2020 "Tracing Complexity: The Case of Archaeology." American Anthropologist

    2019 "Writing Thin." Anthropological Quarterly 92(3): 903-917.

    2017 “Epistemic Artifacts: On the Uses of Complexity in Anthropology.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 23(2): 285-301.

    2016 “Ignoring Complexity: Epistemic Wagers and Knowledge Practices Among Synthetic Biologists.” Science, Technology and Human Values 41(5): 899-921.

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    A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles

    A Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles

    By Paul Rabinow and Talia Dan-Cohen

    A Machine to Make a Future represents a remarkably original look at the present and possible future of biotechnology research in the wake of the mapping of the human genome. The central tenet of Celera Diagnostics--the California biotech company whose formative work during 2003 is the focus of the book--is that the emergent knowledge about the genome, with its profound implications for human health, can now be turned into a powerful diagnostic apparatus--one that will yield breakthrough diagnostic and therapeutic products (and, potentially, profit). Celera's efforts--assuming they succeed--may fundamentally reshape the fabric of how health and health care are understood, practiced, and managed.

    Presenting a series of interviews with all of the key players in Celera Diagnostics, Paul Rabinow and Talia Dan-Cohen open a fascinating window on the complexity of corporate scientific innovation. This marks a radical departure from other books on the biotech industry by chronicling the vicissitudes of a project during a finite time period, in the words of the actors themselves.

    A Simpler Life

    A Simpler Life

    By Talia Dan-Cohen

    A Simpler Life approaches the developing field of synthetic biology by focusing on the experimental and institutional lives of practitioners in two labs at Princeton University. It highlights the distance between hyped technoscience and the more plodding and entrenched aspects of academic research.

    Talia Dan-Cohen follows practitioners as they wrestle with experiments, attempt to publish research findings, and navigate the ins and outs of academic careers. Dan-Cohen foregrounds the practices and rationalities of these pursuits that give both researchers' lives and synthetic life their distinctive contemporary forms. Rather than draw attention to avowed methodology, A Simpler Life investigates some of the more subtle and tectonic practices that bring knowledge, doubt, and technological intervention into new configurations. In so doing, the book sheds light on the more general conditions of contemporary academic technoscience.