Ericka Johnson

Background

2011-  Lecturer, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University
2010-11  Pro Futura Scientia V Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, Uppsala
2009   Docent in Science and Technology Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
2008-10  Postdock Researcher, Sicence and Technology Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
2006-07  Programme Director, Tema T ESST MA programme in STS
2005-06  Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies on Science, Technology and Society, Austria
2004-07  Research Assistant, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University
2004   PhD, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Sweden
1999   M. Phil., Development Studies, Oxford Univerisity, UK
1995   BA, Vassar College, USA

Academic interests

STS and medicine, Gender and technology, Medical socialogy

I am interested how the medical body is reproduced and constructed in and by medical technolgies.

Currently I am studying the changing concepts of health as suggested by pharmaceuticals. I am ledaning a tri-sited ERC funded project that examines healthy subjectivities in relation to the cervical cancer vaccine, alpha blockers, and Alzheimer's treatments. I have recently finished a Swedish Science Council funded study that loooked at masculinity associated with the introduction of Viagra to the Swedish market.

Previous projects have examined how knowledge and facts about the body are gathered, articulated and represented in material artifacts used to teach medical practice. I have looked at the practices, ideas and understandings of professionals and patients as reproduced in the construction and introduction of simulators. To do this I explored the development and use of a female pelvic simulator, research done in conjunction with an interdisiplinary team of colleagues from the Linköping University Hospital's Department of Gender & medicine and the Department of Gender studies.

My Ph.D. work analysed how computer simulators are used in medical education. The study focused on the details of practice when people and machines interact an intra-act, and how the use of simulators contributes to both learning and identity formation. I worked with the issues of gender & Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in my master's thesis and continue to teach and write in this field.

Current projects

Prescriptive Prescriptions: Pharmaceuticals and 'Healthy' Subjectivites - funded by an ERC Starting Researcher Grant

Publications

Books
Johnson, E., and Boel Berner (eds.) (2010) Technology and medical practices. Blood, Guts and Machines. Farnhamn: Ashgate (Volume number 1 in Theory, Technology, Society series)

Johnson, E. (2007) Dreaming of a Mial-Order Husband. Russian-American Internet romance. Durham: Duke University Press.

Johnson, E. (2004) Situating Simulators: The Integration of Simulations in Medical Practice. Lund:Arkiv (PhD Dissertation)

Articles
Johnson, E., Sjögren, E., Åsberg, C. (2011) Prescribing the Swedish Viagra Man (invited submission to Macroscopy) Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, A Nature Publication. January 2011

Åsberg, C. and Johnson, E. (2009) ‘Viagra Selfhood: Pharmaceutical Advertising and the Visual Formation of Swedish Masculinity’ Health Care Analysis, 17(2): 144-159

Johnson, E., (2008) ‘Chemistries of Love. Impotence, erectile dysfunction and Viagra in Läkartidningen’ NORMA 3(1): 31-47

Johnson, E., (2008) ‘Simulating Medical Patients and Practices: Bodies and the Construction of Valid Medical Simulators’ Body and Society 14(3):105-128

Johnson, E., (2008) ‘Out of my viewfinder, yet in the picture: Seeing the hospital in medical simulations’ Science, Technology and Human Values 33(1):53-76

Johnson, E., (2007) ‘Surgical Simulators and Simulated Surgeons: Reconstituting Medical Practice and Practitioners in Simulations’ Social Studies of Science 37(4):585-608

Johnson, E., (2005) ‘The Ghost of Anatomies Past: Simulating the one-sex body in modern medical training’ Feminist Theory. 6(2): 141-59