Ph.D. Candidate
she/they
About
As a qualitative, historical sociologist, Abby Arthur Smith studies how morality varies across time and social groups. She is particularly interested in how science and medicine serve, and are shaped by, moral goals and intuitions.
Her dissertation draws from patient life histories reviewed by compulsory sterilization panels in three U.S. states, alongside meeting minutes documenting their deliberations. This work documents how the dramatic transformation in the percieved legitimacy of forced sterilizations across the 20th century is explained by shifting conceptions of the nature of morality itself.
A second, collaborative line of research concerns how infrastructure shapes lived experiences of race and disability, documenting the co-production of health disparities and identity subjectivities. Taken together, her work traces how moral and causal narratives of disparities shape public health law, practice, and outcomes.
