Associate Professor Rachel Ankeny

Biography/ Background

Rachel A. Ankeny has a BA in Liberal Arts (Philosophy/Maths, St John's College, Santa Fe, NM), and MA degrees in Philosophy and in Bioethics and a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science (all from the University of Pittsburgh, PA). In 2006 she graduated with the degree of Master of Arts in Gastronomy (University of Adelaide) after completing a dissertation on celebratory food habits among Italo-Australian and Italian-American immigrants. Prior to joining the University of Adelaide in 2006, she was director and lecturer/senior lecturer in the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney from 2000.

Rachel serves as a member of the Gene Technology Ethics Committee for the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator of the Commonwealth of Australia; Treasurer of the History of Science Society; and Membership Secretary of the International Network on Feminist Approaches to Bioethics (FAB). She also is a member of several editorial boards for scholarly journals in HPS and bioethics, and associate editor of the Journal of the History of Biology.

Research Interests

Rachel's research interests include food habits in the Italian diaspora, food ethics, and the relationship of science to cuisine. In the history and philosophy of science, her research focuses on the roles of models and case-based reasoning in science, model organisms, the philosophy of medicine, and the history of contemporary life sciences. Her research in bioethics examines ethical and policy issues in genetics, reproduction, women's health, and embryo and stem cell research, among other topics. She currently is co-investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant entitled "Big-Picture Bioethics: Policy Making and Liberal Democracy" and on a National Health and Medical Research Council grant entitled "Deconstructing DTCA: Toward a Differentiated Policy Response to Direct-to-Consumer Advertising in Australia."

Publications

Recent Publications

1. The Rise of Molecular Gastronomy and Its Problematic Use of Science as an Authenticating Authority. In Authenticity in the Kitchen: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005, ed. Richard Hosking. Totnes: Prospect Books, 2006: 44-52.
2. Individual Responsibility and Reproduction. In The Blackwell Guide to Medical Ethics, ed. Rosamund Rhodes, Anita Silvers, and Leslie P. Francis. Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2006 (forthcoming).
3. Model Organisms as Case-Based Reasoning: Worms in Contemporary Biomedical Science. In Science without Laws: Model Systems, Cases, Exemplary Narratives, ed. Angela N.H. Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and M. Norton Wise. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2007 (forthcoming).
4. (with Susan Dodds). Regulation of hESC research in Australia: Promises and pitfalls for deliberative democratic approaches. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 3, no. 1-2 (2006): 95-107.
5. (with John E.J. Rasko and Gabrielle M. O'Sullivan, eds.) The Ethics of Inheritable Genetic Modification: A Dividing Line? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
6. Robert Skipper Jr., Colin Allen, Rachel A. Ankeny, Carl F. Craver, Lindley Darden, Greg Mikkelson, and Robert Richardson. eds. Philosophy and the Life Sciences: A Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007 (forthcoming).

Entry last updated: Saturday, 3 May 2008