Sara Wylie

Intimate toxicities, bounded governance and relational learning

Sara Wylie is Assistant Professor at Northeastern University with a joint appointment in sociology/anthropology and health sciences, where she is a member of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute. Wylie seeks to develop new modes of studying and intervening in large-scale environmental health issues through a fusion of social scientific, scientific and art/design practices, and is engaged in developing open-source research projects on low cost thermal imaging, low cost imaging of water pollution, community-based methods for detection of hydrogen sulfide among other civic science projects. Her book, Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds published by Duke University Press, is an ethnographic study of the role science based NGOs played in the emergence of public concerns about the human and environmental health impacts of chemicals used in natural gas extraction, particularly hydraulic fracturing.

Recently Wylie cofounded the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI). EDGI is a collaboration of academics and non-profits working to track and respond to changes in U.S. federal environmental governance. Wylie has co-edited with Rebecca Lave EDGI’s 100 Days and Counting series of rapid response, public reports detailing and contextualizing changes in environmental governance under the Trump Administration. She is also cofounder of Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, a non-profit that develops open source, Do It Yourself tools for community based environmental analysis. She received her Ph.D. from MIT’s History, Anthropology and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS) Program.