Jenny Bangham | Queen Mary, University of London (original) (raw)

Books by Jenny Bangham

University of Chicago Press, 2020

Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through peo... more Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the intimate connections between the early infrastructures of blood transfusion and the development of human genetics. Focusing on mid-twentieth-century Britain, Blood Relations connects histories of eugenics to the local politics of giving blood, showing how the exchange of blood carved out networks that made human populations into objects of medical surveillance and scientific research. Bangham reveals how biology was transformed by two world wars, how scientists have worked to define racial categories, and how the practices and rhetoric of public health made genetics into a human science. Today, genetics is a powerful authority on human health and identity, and Blood Relations helps us understand how this authority was achieved.

Papers by Jenny Bangham

GigaScience, 2016

In February 1996, the genome community met in Bermuda to formulate principles for circulating gen... more In February 1996, the genome community met in Bermuda to formulate principles for circulating genomic data. Although it is now 20 years since the Bermuda Principles were formulated, they continue to play a central role in shaping genomic and data-sharing practices. However, since 1996, "openness" has become an increasingly complex issue. This commentary seeks to articulate three core challenges data-sharing faces today.

MPIWG Preprint [Max Planck Institute for the History of Science], 2016

History of the Human Sciences (Preprint)

'What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists (1952)' is a picture book for school children published b... more 'What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists (1952)' is a picture book for school children published by UNESCO as part of its high-profile campaign on race. The 87-page, oblong, soft-cover pamphlet contains bold, semi-abstract, pared-down images accompanied by text, devised (so it declared) to make scientific concepts ‘more easily intelligible to the layman’. Produced by UNESCO’s Department of Mass Communication, the picture book represents the organization’s early-postwar confidence in the power of scientific knowledge as a social remedy and diplomatic tool. In keeping with a significant component of the race campaign, 'What Is Race?' presented genetics as the route to an enlightened, scientific, non-prejudiced understanding of race. This article seeks to explain the book’s management, aesthetics and framing in the context of postwar disciplinary and international politics. Viewing UNESCO’s race campaign as a high point for an internationalist ideology of mass education, the article also analyses the visual and literary arguments of 'What Is Race?' and proposes that the enduring image of genetics as technical and neutral knowledge was in part shaped by UNESCO’s efforts to communicate scientific authority to an apparently ‘popular’ audience.

Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Sep 2014

Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was a vast collection of popul... more Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was a vast collection of population genetic data.It presented blood-group frequencies as a ‘scientific’ methodology for studying human diversity.The paper follows how Mourant and his colleagues made population genetic data.Data were structured by the ways in which populations were defined and accessed by researchers.Populations were shaped by institutions, governments, and historical, racial and national identities.Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was an “indispensable” reference book on the “anthropology of blood groups” containing a vast collection of human genetic data. It was based on the results of blood-grouping tests carried out on half-a-million people and drew together studies on diverse populations around the world: from rural communities, to religious exiles, to volunteer transfusion donors. This paper pieces together sequential stages in the production of a small fraction of the blood-group data in Mourant's book, to examine how he and his colleagues made genetic data from people. Using sources from several collecting projects, I follow how blood was encountered, how it was inscribed, and how it was turned into a laboratory resource. I trace Mourant's analytical and representational strategies to make blood groups both credibly ‘genetic’ and understood as relevant to human ancestry, race and history. In this story, ‘populations’ were not simply given, but were produced through public health, colonial and post-colonial institutions, and by the labour and expertise of subjects, assistants and mediators. Genetic data were not self-evidently ‘biological’, but were shaped by existing historical and geographical identities, by political relationships, and by notions of kinship and belonging.

British Journal for the History of Science, 2013

In the 1940s and 1950s, British and American journals published a flood of papers by doctors, pat... more In the 1940s and 1950s, British and American journals published a flood of papers by doctors, pathologists, geneticists and anthropologists debating the virtues of two competing nomenclatures used to denote the Rhesus blood groups. Accounts of this prolonged and often bitter episode have tended to focus on the main protagonists' personalities and theoretical commitments. Here I take a different approach and use the literature generated by the dispute to recover the practical and epistemic functions of nomenclatures in genetics. Drawing on recent work that views inscriptions as part of the material culture of science, I use the Rhesus controversy to think about the ways in which geneticists visualized and negotiated their objects of research, and how they communicated and collaborated with workers in other settings. Extending recent studies of relations between different media, I consider the material forms of nomenclatures, as they were jotted in notebooks, printed in journals, scribbled on blackboards and spoken out loud. The competing Rhesus nomenclatures had different virtues as they were expressed in different media and made to embody commitments to laboratory practices. In exploring the varied practical and epistemic qualities of nomenclatures I also suggest a new understanding of the Rhesus controversy itself.

Human heredity in the Twentieth Century, edited by Bernd Gausemeier, Edmund Ramsden and Staffan Müller-Wille, Pickering and Chatto., 2013

Molecular …, Jan 1, 2008

In natural populations, genetic variation affects resistance to disease. Whether that genetic var... more In natural populations, genetic variation affects resistance to disease. Whether that genetic variation comprises lots of small-effect polymorphisms or a small number of large-effect polymorphisms has implications for adaptation, selection and how genetic variation is maintained in populations. Furthermore, how much genetic variation there is, and the genes that underlie this variation, affects models of co-evolution between parasites and their hosts. We are studying the genetic variation that affects the resistance of Drosophila melanogaster to its natural pathogen -the vertically transmitted sigma virus. We have carried out three separate quantitative trait locus mapping analyses to map gene variants on the second chromosome that cause variation in the rate at which males transmit the infection to their offspring. All three crosses identified a locus in a similar chromosomal location that causes a large drop in the rate at which the virus is transmitted. We also found evidence for an additional smaller-effect quantitative trait locus elsewhere on the chromosome. Our data, together with previous experiments on the sigma virus and parasitoid wasps, indicate that the resistance of D. melanogaster to co-evolved pathogens is controlled by a limited number of major-effect polymorphisms. Wyers F, Dru P, Simonet B, Contamine D (1993) Immunological cross-reactions and interactions between the Drosophila melanogaster ref (2) P protein and sigma rhabdovirus proteins. Journal of Virology, 67, 3208-3216.

Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, Jan 1, 2012

Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2007

What selective processes underlie the evolution of parasites and their hosts? Arms-race models pr... more What selective processes underlie the evolution of parasites and their hosts? Arms-race models propose that new host-resistance mutations or parasite counter-adaptations arise and sweep to fixation. Frequencydependent models propose that selection favours pathogens adapted to the most common host genotypes, conferring an advantage to rare host genotypes. Distinguishing between these models is empirically difficult. The maintenance of disease-resistance polymorphisms has been studied in detail in plants, but less so in animals, and rarely in natural populations. We have made a detailed study of genetic variation in host resistance in a natural animal population, Drosophila melanogaster, and its natural pathogen, the sigma virus. We confirm previous findings that a single (albeit complex) mutation in the gene ref P confers resistance against sigma and show that this mutation has increased in frequency under positive selection. Previous studies suggested that ref(2)P polymorphism reflects the progress of a very recent selective sweep, and that in Europe during the 1980s, this was followed by a sweep of a sigma virus strain able to infect flies carrying this mutation. We find that the ref P resistance mutation is considerably older than the recent spread of this viral strain and suggest that-possibly because it is recessive-the initial spread of the resistance mutation was very slow.

Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 2003

Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2003

University of Chicago Press, 2020

Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through peo... more Blood is messy, dangerous, and charged with meaning. By following it as it circulates through people and institutions, Jenny Bangham explores the intimate connections between the early infrastructures of blood transfusion and the development of human genetics. Focusing on mid-twentieth-century Britain, Blood Relations connects histories of eugenics to the local politics of giving blood, showing how the exchange of blood carved out networks that made human populations into objects of medical surveillance and scientific research. Bangham reveals how biology was transformed by two world wars, how scientists have worked to define racial categories, and how the practices and rhetoric of public health made genetics into a human science. Today, genetics is a powerful authority on human health and identity, and Blood Relations helps us understand how this authority was achieved.

GigaScience, 2016

In February 1996, the genome community met in Bermuda to formulate principles for circulating gen... more In February 1996, the genome community met in Bermuda to formulate principles for circulating genomic data. Although it is now 20 years since the Bermuda Principles were formulated, they continue to play a central role in shaping genomic and data-sharing practices. However, since 1996, "openness" has become an increasingly complex issue. This commentary seeks to articulate three core challenges data-sharing faces today.

MPIWG Preprint [Max Planck Institute for the History of Science], 2016

History of the Human Sciences (Preprint)

'What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists (1952)' is a picture book for school children published b... more 'What Is Race? Evidence from Scientists (1952)' is a picture book for school children published by UNESCO as part of its high-profile campaign on race. The 87-page, oblong, soft-cover pamphlet contains bold, semi-abstract, pared-down images accompanied by text, devised (so it declared) to make scientific concepts ‘more easily intelligible to the layman’. Produced by UNESCO’s Department of Mass Communication, the picture book represents the organization’s early-postwar confidence in the power of scientific knowledge as a social remedy and diplomatic tool. In keeping with a significant component of the race campaign, 'What Is Race?' presented genetics as the route to an enlightened, scientific, non-prejudiced understanding of race. This article seeks to explain the book’s management, aesthetics and framing in the context of postwar disciplinary and international politics. Viewing UNESCO’s race campaign as a high point for an internationalist ideology of mass education, the article also analyses the visual and literary arguments of 'What Is Race?' and proposes that the enduring image of genetics as technical and neutral knowledge was in part shaped by UNESCO’s efforts to communicate scientific authority to an apparently ‘popular’ audience.

Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Sep 2014

Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was a vast collection of popul... more Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was a vast collection of population genetic data.It presented blood-group frequencies as a ‘scientific’ methodology for studying human diversity.The paper follows how Mourant and his colleagues made population genetic data.Data were structured by the ways in which populations were defined and accessed by researchers.Populations were shaped by institutions, governments, and historical, racial and national identities.Arthur Mourant's The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups (1954) was an “indispensable” reference book on the “anthropology of blood groups” containing a vast collection of human genetic data. It was based on the results of blood-grouping tests carried out on half-a-million people and drew together studies on diverse populations around the world: from rural communities, to religious exiles, to volunteer transfusion donors. This paper pieces together sequential stages in the production of a small fraction of the blood-group data in Mourant's book, to examine how he and his colleagues made genetic data from people. Using sources from several collecting projects, I follow how blood was encountered, how it was inscribed, and how it was turned into a laboratory resource. I trace Mourant's analytical and representational strategies to make blood groups both credibly ‘genetic’ and understood as relevant to human ancestry, race and history. In this story, ‘populations’ were not simply given, but were produced through public health, colonial and post-colonial institutions, and by the labour and expertise of subjects, assistants and mediators. Genetic data were not self-evidently ‘biological’, but were shaped by existing historical and geographical identities, by political relationships, and by notions of kinship and belonging.

British Journal for the History of Science, 2013

In the 1940s and 1950s, British and American journals published a flood of papers by doctors, pat... more In the 1940s and 1950s, British and American journals published a flood of papers by doctors, pathologists, geneticists and anthropologists debating the virtues of two competing nomenclatures used to denote the Rhesus blood groups. Accounts of this prolonged and often bitter episode have tended to focus on the main protagonists' personalities and theoretical commitments. Here I take a different approach and use the literature generated by the dispute to recover the practical and epistemic functions of nomenclatures in genetics. Drawing on recent work that views inscriptions as part of the material culture of science, I use the Rhesus controversy to think about the ways in which geneticists visualized and negotiated their objects of research, and how they communicated and collaborated with workers in other settings. Extending recent studies of relations between different media, I consider the material forms of nomenclatures, as they were jotted in notebooks, printed in journals, scribbled on blackboards and spoken out loud. The competing Rhesus nomenclatures had different virtues as they were expressed in different media and made to embody commitments to laboratory practices. In exploring the varied practical and epistemic qualities of nomenclatures I also suggest a new understanding of the Rhesus controversy itself.

Human heredity in the Twentieth Century, edited by Bernd Gausemeier, Edmund Ramsden and Staffan Müller-Wille, Pickering and Chatto., 2013

Molecular …, Jan 1, 2008

In natural populations, genetic variation affects resistance to disease. Whether that genetic var... more In natural populations, genetic variation affects resistance to disease. Whether that genetic variation comprises lots of small-effect polymorphisms or a small number of large-effect polymorphisms has implications for adaptation, selection and how genetic variation is maintained in populations. Furthermore, how much genetic variation there is, and the genes that underlie this variation, affects models of co-evolution between parasites and their hosts. We are studying the genetic variation that affects the resistance of Drosophila melanogaster to its natural pathogen -the vertically transmitted sigma virus. We have carried out three separate quantitative trait locus mapping analyses to map gene variants on the second chromosome that cause variation in the rate at which males transmit the infection to their offspring. All three crosses identified a locus in a similar chromosomal location that causes a large drop in the rate at which the virus is transmitted. We also found evidence for an additional smaller-effect quantitative trait locus elsewhere on the chromosome. Our data, together with previous experiments on the sigma virus and parasitoid wasps, indicate that the resistance of D. melanogaster to co-evolved pathogens is controlled by a limited number of major-effect polymorphisms. Wyers F, Dru P, Simonet B, Contamine D (1993) Immunological cross-reactions and interactions between the Drosophila melanogaster ref (2) P protein and sigma rhabdovirus proteins. Journal of Virology, 67, 3208-3216.

Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, Jan 1, 2012

Proceedings of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2007

What selective processes underlie the evolution of parasites and their hosts? Arms-race models pr... more What selective processes underlie the evolution of parasites and their hosts? Arms-race models propose that new host-resistance mutations or parasite counter-adaptations arise and sweep to fixation. Frequencydependent models propose that selection favours pathogens adapted to the most common host genotypes, conferring an advantage to rare host genotypes. Distinguishing between these models is empirically difficult. The maintenance of disease-resistance polymorphisms has been studied in detail in plants, but less so in animals, and rarely in natural populations. We have made a detailed study of genetic variation in host resistance in a natural animal population, Drosophila melanogaster, and its natural pathogen, the sigma virus. We confirm previous findings that a single (albeit complex) mutation in the gene ref P confers resistance against sigma and show that this mutation has increased in frequency under positive selection. Previous studies suggested that ref(2)P polymorphism reflects the progress of a very recent selective sweep, and that in Europe during the 1980s, this was followed by a sweep of a sigma virus strain able to infect flies carrying this mutation. We find that the ref P resistance mutation is considerably older than the recent spread of this viral strain and suggest that-possibly because it is recessive-the initial spread of the resistance mutation was very slow.

Proceedings of the …, Jan 1, 2003

Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2003

Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 2003