Oliver Rollins
Assistant Professor, Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CSDE Research Areas:
- Health of People and Populations
In the News:
- Dorothy Roberts Talk on Reproductive Justice after Dobbs (1/10 & 1/11/24) (01/05/2024)
- Rollins to Present Book Talk at the American Ethnic Studies Department (03/28/2022)
- The Therapeutic Promise: Neuroprediction, Risk, the Violent Brain (02/25/2022)
- CSDE Welcomes Four More Faculty Affiliates! (10/29/2021)
Oliver Rollins is a qualitative sociologist who works on issues of race/racism in and through science and technology. Specifically, his research explores how racial identity, racialized discourses, and systemic practices of social difference influence, engage with, and are affected by, the making and use of neuroscientific technologies and knowledges. Rollins’s book, Conviction: The Making and Unmaking of The Violent Brain (Stanford University Press, 2021), traces the development and use of neuroimaging research on anti-social behaviors and crime, with special attention to the limits of this controversial brain model when dealing with aspects of social difference, power, and inequality. Currently, he is working on a project that examines the neuroscience of implicit bias, chiefly the challenges, consequences, and promises of operationalizing racial prejudice and identity as neurobiological processes. Rollins teaches courses on science, technology, and society; race/racisms, social inequities and health, and bioethics. Rollins received his Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco.