Michael Montoya
Assistant Professor of Anthropology (PhD: Stanford, 2003)
3263 Social Sciences Plaza B
(949) 824-1585
email: mmontoya at uci dot edu
Michael Montoya is an Assistant Professor in the Chicano/Latino Studies program and the department of Anthropology. Prior to his appointment at UC-Irvine, Montoya was an Affiliate Fellow at the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, CA. He also served as the Associate Director of the University of Wisconsin Institute on Race and Ethnicity and as a program analyst/planner for the University of Wisconsin System Administration. Prior to graduate school, Montoya worked for over seven years in non-profit human service program development and management in the areas of housing, health care, anti-hunger and literacy.
Michael Montoya received his Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University in 2003. Montoya's research is in the field of medical anthropology and the social and cultural studies of science and technology. His dissertation, entitled "Genetics of Inequality: Configurations of Race and Mexican Ethnicity in Diabetes Genetic Epidemiology," explores the new conceptions of racial and ethnic groups formulated through genomic sciences. His other research interests include health disparities, the participation of ethnic populations in biomedical research, the US/Mexican border, social inequality and race theory. Montoya has received doctoral research support from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Montoya is interested in exploring the boundaries of biomedical and social sciences in order to find a critically integrated approach to solving health disparities among Chicano/Latino communities. This emerging research agenda has been funded by the NIH National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and entails joining with like-minded collaborators from the life and social sciences as well as others with stakes in health outcomes and social equality. By dividing the labor between research into the lived conditions of bodies in certain contexts and research into the pathophysiological and biological impact of those life conditions, Montoya hopes to demonstrate that a unified approach to health research offers better conceptual and predictive possibilities than conventional disciplinary research alone.
Montoya approaches undisciplinary and (neo)applied research imaginaries with the commitment to epistemological and cultural critique. Informed by sociocultural studies of technosciences and by enduring theoretical concerns with human variation writ large, Montoya's research blends the speculative, the applied, the material and semiotic, with the contingent concerns with solving not merely characterizing - disparate distributions of inequality, suffering, and injustice. Consequently, projects that emanate from Montoya's lab are attempts at creating situated active accounts of human problems that are locatable within stratified fields of unequal power relations.
Michael Montoya grew up one of six children in Portland, Oregon. He was the first in his family to graduate from college. His parents came from a central Oregon ranching community with extended family ties in Northern New Mexico. He enjoys cooking, growing flowers, politics, and playing soccer with his three children.
http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/IRE/about/
Mis dos centavos in the press:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2004/08/24/should_medicine_be_colorblind?mode=PF
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=tct:2004:07:21:379854:FRONT
Selected Publications"Nodes and Queries: Linking Locations in Networked Fields of Inquiry."
With D. Heath, E. Koch, B. Ley. American Behavioral Scientist 43.3, 450-463 (1999).
"Genetics of Inequality: Configurations of the Mexicana/o Body in Diabetes Gene Research."
Book manuscript in preparation.
"Bioethnic Conscription: Genes, Race and Mexicana/o Ethnicity in Diabetes Research."
Cultural Anthropology 22(1) (2007).
"Racialized Genetics and the Study of Complex Diseases: The thrifty genotype revisited."
With Paradies, YC, and Fullerton, SM.
Forthcoming in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine.
"Emergent Biosociality: Genetic Admixture, Diabetes and Mexicana/o Ethnicity."
Under review for Social Studies of Science - Genetics and Disease Spec. Issue.
"Beyond the Scientific Pipeline: Toward a Pluralistic Science for the 21st Century."
Under review for Science and Policy - Special Issue on Science and Equity.
"Entry - Diabetes."
Forthcoming in the Encyclopedia of Race and Racism.
"Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Migration Project."
Journal of American Studies, 40, 2006 (2) 424-425. Review of Durand, Jorge and Douglas S. Massey, Editors Sage Foundation, New York, NY.
"'Love of Shopping' is Not a Gene"
American Anthropologist. Vol. 108, No. 2: 410-411. (2006). Review of Anne Innis Dagg, Towanda, NY: Black Rose Books.