As 2021 comes to an end, we are excited to introduce two faculty members who will be joining the Center in 2022. Please join us in welcoming them to Michigan State University.
Jennifer McCurdy, PhD, will join the Center in January. Dr. McCurdy was most recently a Multicultural Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is a critical social bioethicist whose work focuses on understanding and eliminating racial and colonial injustices in contemporary health settings and communities. Currently, Dr. McCurdy is working on a scoping review of Indigenous values in the bioethics literature, and she is co-leading a series of Hastings Center special reports on racism and bioethics.
Dr. McCurdy received her PhD in religious studies with emphasis in ethics, colonialism, and critical religious studies from the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology in 2019. She also holds a Master of Humanities with emphasis in philosophy and bioethics, a Bachelor of Science in nursing, and an HEC-C (Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certified).
Megh Marathe, PhD, will join the Center next fall with a joint appointment in the Department of Media and Information in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences. Dr. Marathe is currently a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. They received their PhD in information from the University of Michigan in 2021.
Dr. Marathe’s research seeks to foster dialogue between expert knowledge and lived experience in the domain of health. Their recent work showed that for both doctors and patients, the boundary between pathologic and normal events is fluid, dynamic, and porous in epilepsy and other episodic conditions. Calling an event a seizure affects the patient’s financial stability, social participation, and life aspirations, and hence, both patients and providers take an expedient approach to diagnosing seizures.
Dr. Marathe’s work advances the fields of information studies, disability studies, and science and technology studies, and generates practical implications for inclusive healthcare in the era of technologized medicine. They are actively seeking collaborators for new projects that: 1) support patients with childhood-onset cancer or epilepsy in the transition to adult care, and 2) examine how neural implants affect medical practice and patient experience. Visit Dr. Marathe’s website to learn more about their work.
MSU Bioethics 