Kate Darling, PhD

Affiliate Faculty

Research Interests

  • Community Health Workers
  • Harm Reduction
  • Occupational Health
  • Environmental Health
  • Ethics & Equity in Genomics/Health Science

Dr. Katherine (Kate) Weatherford Darling, PhD is an award-winning sociologist working across the boundaries of medical sociology, science and technology studies, public health and bioethics. She received a B.S. in Molecular Environmental Biology from University of California, Berkeley, a PhD in Sociology from University of California, San Francisco., and a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford Center for Biomedical Research.

She is currently an Assistant Professor of Health Science at the University of Maine School of Nursing and is affiliated with the UMaine Institute of Medicine and Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering.

Murray, A., Browe, D., Darling, K. W., & Reardon, J. (2024). Cells and the city: The rise and fall of urban biopolitics in San Francisco, 1970-2020. Social studies of science, 54(6), 805–835. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127241261376

Johnson, T., Darling, K.W., Kantor, D., Spiller, J., Jones, O., Kunz, L., Casimir, T., Dowley, A., Kurtz, G., Sachs, L., Silka, L., McGreavy, B. 2023 “Understanding Occupational Injury and Substance Use Issues among Workers in the Shellfish and Lobster Industries” Maine Policy Review, 32:2, 155-164, Special Issue on Our Shared Ocean https://doi.org/10.53558/HMLG6818

Darling, K. W., Kohut, M., Leeds, S., Anderson, E. C., & Han, P. K. J. (2022). “Doing Good” in U.S. Cancer Genomics? Valuation practices across the boundaries of research and care in rural community oncology. New genetics and society, 41(3), 254–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/14636778.2022.2091532

Darling, K. W., Ackerman, S. L., Hiatt, R. H., Lee, S. S., & Shim, J. K. (2016). Enacting the molecular imperative: How gene-environment interaction research links bodies and environments in the post-genomic age. Social science & medicine (1982), 155, 51–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.03.007 [PubMed Link]

Darling, K. W., Boyce, A. M., Cho, M. K., & Sankar, P. L. (2015). “What is the FDA Going to Think?”: Negotiating Values through Reflective and Strategic Category Work in Microbiome Science. Science, technology & human values, 40(1), 71–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43671220  [PubMed Link]