Postdoctoral Researcher
Microsoft Research New England

Hello!

I’m Kathryne (Kate) Metcalf, a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England and an incoming Assistant Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information (starting July 2026). I’m an interpretive social scientist interested in how data practices condition the production of knowledge, particularly in the health and life sciences. I work between perspectives from Science & Technology Studies (STS), Critical Data Studies (CDS), and the history and sociology of genetics.

My current book project—Pathologies of Scale—examines the emergence and effects of biobanks as an organizational form within the broader turn to data-intensive human genomics research. I excavate how the production of genetic data has been delegated to an expansive, heterogeneous, and often invisible biobanking ecosystem. In doing so, I argue that the blind pursuit of ever-bigger data has, for decades, unevenly papered over trenchant disagreements and perniciously unresolved questions about our categories of health, disease, and human difference. By paying attention to how biobanks negotiate and defer questions about which data will be needed for what ends, this book uncovers how mundane data practices intermediate, shape, and constrain the loftiest ambitions of human genetics—and with it, the future of precision medicine.

I received my PhD in Communication and Science Studies from the University of California San Diego. I also hold an MA in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University, and a BA in Literary Studies from Beloit College. In a past life I was a science writer at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and I’m still passionate about science communication.

Interests

• knowledge infrastructures

• genetics and society

• ML/AI in bioscience

• privacy and surveillance studies

• politics of risk prediction