The Centre runs a series of lectures throughout term time.  They will take place from 4pm to 5.30pm. The seminars are open to anyone who is interested: students, fellow academics and the wider public - all welcome.

Further information is available from Hannah Elizabeth.

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Seminar Series 2025/26

22nd January 2026 4pm-5.30pm with Ann-Katrine Schmidt Nielson

Location: Strathclyde Business School, Cathedral Wing, CW406a

Biography

Ann-Katrine Schmidt Nielsen, PhD, is assistant professor at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. She is affiliated with the research project Genetic Hauntings (2023-2026, IRFD), which investigates user experiences and narratives of direct-to-consumer genetic testing for health management purposes. Her research interests are illness narratives, hauntology, conflict and culture studies. She has published on these and related topics in volumes from the University of Minnesota Press and Institute of Network Cultures as well as in Popular Communication (forthcoming), Narrative Inquiry (forthcoming), and SomaTechnics (2025). She is also the co-author of DIY Genetics: Exploring User Engagements with Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests (with professor Carsten Stage, Cambridge Elements series, forthcoming).

Living with risk assessments. How direct-to-consumer genetic testing changes narratives of illness and health

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC GT) is a relatively novel health and lifestyle technology. With a commercial testing kit, users can test for various genetic diseases, conditions, and traits at home without the assistance of medical staff or institutions. The DIY test has fundamentally reshaped the accessibility of genetic information that has previously been the property of genetics and science proper. Since the biotechnology was introduced to the mainstream market in 2007, DTC genetic testing has been a highly controversial and volatile topic. Not least, health care professionals have called for caution following the general interest in DTC GT across social and mainstream media alike. While testing companies argue that they help democratize genetics in a fun, empowering, and informative way (Kragh-Furbo & Tutton, 2017; Turrini, 2018), professionals warn about several problems related to the lack of scientific validity, data control, overmedicalization, illness anxiety, and market regulation (Gerdes et al., 2020).

This talk approaches direct-to-consumer genetic testing as a technology that begets new forms of illness narratives. When potential illness arrives before the event of falling ill – in the form of a genetic risk assessment that simultaneously reveals information about familial heritage, individual bodies, and their possible futures – it raises questions concerning, for example, autonomy, temporality, prognoses, and family relations. These tests often leave users with genetic revelations not only about themselves but also, potentially, about familial others, and without professional medical guidance on how to navigate these affectively and ethically complex situations. The talk draws on 20 qualitative surveys, 5 in-depth interviews, and 56 media texts to investigate the dilemmatic narratives of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. It discusses how this form of genetic knowledge produces new types of illness narratives in which the canonical ‘wounded storyteller’ (Frank, 1995) is replaced by an entangled at-risk subject navigating often-conflicting claims for care (Bellacasa, 2017; Tronto, 1993).