Hi!

I’m Os Keyes, a Science and Technology Studies researcher, currently working at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. My work is largely situated in two (seemingly-unconnected) areas: questions of AI governance (particularly as it relates to ideas of power, policymaking, gender and disability), and the history and politics of gender-affirming care. Tying them together is the desire to understand how ideas of science and technology play a role in constructing the world, and how we might construct better ones.

Prior to this, I was a PhD student in the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering, following essentially the same two themes. The AI work resulted in over a dozen journal articles, alongside many smaller pieces, and the award of an inagurual Ada Lovelace Fellowship. My dissertation, Trans Science, explored the past, present and future of gender-affirming medicine and the politics of scientific efforts to demonstrate its effect on patients, and is currently under contract with the University of Washington Press.

Outside of formal academic research, I have written for Wired, The Baffler, Vice, Logic(s) and a host of other popular venues, taught philosophy in the Seattle University’s honours program just for funsies, and worked as a biomedical archivist at the University of Washington, processing interesting archive collections and making them available for future and other scholars.

I can be contacted at Os_Keyes @ uml . edu if you have questions about any of the above, particularly/as well as:

1. The history of trans medicine and medical research around that domain of care;
2. Many, many (pretty well-informed) opinions on the politics of AI;
3. Grad school application help and advice, particularly if you’re trans, and/or;
4. Where you might send me high-value cheques and/or offers to be Name Chair of Writing Long Interdisciplinary Manuscripts.