Doogab Yi

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Doogab Yi is associate professor of history of science and technology in the Department of Western History at Seoul National University.

As a fellow, Yi is embarking on a new research project that will examine the contemporary history of biomedical and pharmacological technologies for manipulating and improving human beings in an age of global capitalism. As the consequences of the ever-expanding, nonstop processes of late capitalism, the marketplace now constantly operates, pushing human beings into the constant cycle of production and consumption. Addictive stimulants have, in many ways, helped human beings to accommodate the demands of the constantly operating marketplace. Indeed, from the mid-20th century on, a broad variety of addictive stimulants—such as nicotine, psychedelic drugs, and caffeinated products—have been actively developed, used, and often abused so that human beings could make themselves more amenable to both the demands of capitalistic work discipline and constant consumption.

Yi is the author of The Recombinant University: Genetic Engineering and the Emergence of Stanford Biotechnology (University of Chicago Press, 2015). He received his PhD in history from Princeton University and worked as a Stetten Fellow at the US National Institutes of Health.