Dr. Julia Brown is an anthropologist and bioethicist who examines lived experiences and social value-making around controversial biotechnologies. She is currently exploring the ethics of prenatal gene technologies, including the emergence of prenatal gene editing. She is author of The Clozapine Clinic: Health Agency in High-Risk conditions (Routledge 2022).
Dr. Brown was one of the Kavli Center's inaugural Postdoctoral Fellows where she workshopped her research findings on the complex intersection between scientific, clinical, patient, and societal values. This included designing community engagement initiatives to investigate diverse social values around prenatal gene therapy—to improve the advancement of health equity goals alongside controversial preventive precision medicine. These efforts have led to an ongoing collaboration and formal affiliation with the UC Berkeley Kavli Center for Ethics, Science, and the Public in her new position as UCSF faculty. Dr Brown is the Associate Editor of the journal Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, and is Assistant Professor of Humanities & Social Sciences in the UCSF School of Medicine.
