BIOGRAPHY

Susan Wright is Research Scientist Emerita in History of Science and International Relations in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan and is currently a member of the Department of Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz. Over the past thirty years, her research and writing has focused on the history and politics of molecular biology and biotechnology and on the international and national politics of biological warfare and disarmament. Her books include Molecular Politics: Developing American and British Regulatory Policy for Genetic Engineering, 1972-1982 (University of Chicago Press, 1994), Preventing a Biological Arms Race (MIT Press, 1990), and Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).

She received a B.A. in physics from Oxford University, an M.S. in theoretical physics from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D. in history of science from Harvard University. From 1979 to 1998, she directed the Residential College Science and Society Program at the University of Michigan. From 1998 to 1999, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva where she directed an international project, Forming a North-South Alliance to Address Current Problems of Biological Warfare and Disarmament. From 2003 to 2005, she was a consultant for a research project, The Bioterrorism Challenge, supported by Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security. In 2007, she was a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the School of Social Sciences, University of Wollongong, Australia. Her present research, supported by a National Science Foundation research grant, addresses the history of U.S. counterbioterrorism policy under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

 

RECENT ARTICLES

Terrorists and Biological Weapons: Forging the Linkage in the Clinton Administration.

"Feminist Theory and Arms Control," in Laura Sjoberg, ed., Gender and International Security (Routledge, 2010).