Photo of Iris Clever
Iris Clever Email Interests:

Iris studies contemporary and historical knowledge production practices including scientific data practices. She is a qualitative, interdisciplinary researcher who brings together the history of science, medicine, and technology, science and technology studies, and critical data studies.

Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urban-Champaign

Iris Clever is a historian of science, medicine, and technology whose research explores why and how science measures what it measures. Much of her work is concerned with the quantification of bodies, the human experience of measurement practices, and the role bodies and technologies play in defining the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity in science. Her current book project, The Lives and Afterlives of Skulls, reveals how and why biometrics emerged in the 19th and 20th century as an innovative tool to shed new light on human variation while it continued to perpetuate old racial prejudices in algorithms, instruments, and human data. Iris teaches widely in history of science and medicine, cultural history, STS, race, and gender. She holds a PhD in History from UCLA and a BA and MA in History from Utrecht University.