Kristen Koopman

Kristen Koopman is a Ph.D. candidate in Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech.  Her research focuses on the relationship between social values, science, and science fiction.  She also holds an M.S. in STS from Virginia Tech and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence.  Her other interests include engineering and society, the history of science and technology in Cuba, the relationship between science and popular culture, the epistemology of critique, and writing speculative fiction.

Her dissertation examines how social values embedded in technoscience, particularly related to categories of difference such as race and gender, operate within the speculative fiction community.  This mixed-methods project focuses on novels that have been nominated for the Hugo Award, analyzing (1) techniques of exposition in the texts themselves, (2) discourses in reviews of the novels, and (3) interviews with authors about research practices.