Adriana Petryna, past Member (2003–04) and Visitor (2006) in the School of Social Science, has authored Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change, offering a new perspective on the current climate crisis. Published by Princeton University Press, the book chronicles the destabilized landscape of emergency responses to climate change-related disasters and presents a framework for addressing environmental challenges.
Petryna details how unpredictable disasters have left emergency responders with unreliable models and untenable detection measures. In this context, Petryna introduces “horizoning,” a methodology of examining natural disasters against the horizon of expectation through which a population can respond.
This most recent addition to Petryna’s work builds on her contributions to the fields of anthropology, health care, and environmentalism, including her award-winning books When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects and Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl.
For her contributions to anthropological research as applied to medical problems, Petryna is a recipient of the Wellcome Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. In 2019, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
