Mira Vale

I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. I study how new technologies shape the practice and provision of healthcare, combining approaches from economic sociology, medical sociology, and science and technology studies.

My work starts from an observation of a longstanding pattern: technological innovation outpaces social systems of moral and legal evaluation. The systems that regulate and make sense of new technology develop after we discover what new technology makes possible. Using ethnographic and mixed qualitative methods, my research asks: How do norms and values around new technology get settled?

My book project examines the construction of ethics in digital psychiatry, a discipline that develops apps and sensors for mental healthcare. Although the field is growing rapidly, it is largely unregulated. My project draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to explore how digital psychiatry researchers tackle questions about privacy, autonomy, and consent in the absence of clear social or legal prescriptions. This project offers an empirical investigation into how norms and rules around new technology get made in practice.

I’ve also explored questions about ethics, technology, and healthcare through a number of different research projects. This work is published in Social Science & Medicine, Socius, and the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, among other venues, and it has received awards from three sections of the American Sociological Association. My research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the American Sociological Association, and the Institute for Citizens and Scholars.