Dr. Clémence Pinel
CV
Dr Clémence Pinel is Senior Lecturer in Science and Technology Studies. She holds a PhD from King’s College London. Her research is dedicated to the study of knowledge production and valuation practices in the life sciences, exploring the social, ethical, and political implications of life sciences and technology. Her main curiosity lies in the study of data-intensive science. Clémence approaches data-intensive technologies and knowledge production not as natural or objective representations of the world but as emerging phenomena simultaneously reflecting and constructing citizens, populations and states. Such an approach is particularly important in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), where Big Data are routinely drawn upon to train algorithms and enact automation for healthcare, public policy and many other domains. By employing ethnographic methods, she traces the cultural and political production of quantitative measures and categories and in so doing, open up for enquiry their implications for the production of knowledge, health care delivery and policy.
Her work has contributed to important advances in science studies, particularly with respect to understanding: 1) What makes valuable data in scientific and health contexts, shedding light on labor practices enabling the production of data; 2) The implications of Big Data for the knowledge produced about the world and the organization of healthcare; 3) The valuation circuits bringing together a series of actors to exchange, trade and rent knowledge resources and technologies towards the production of different forms of value.
Her PhD dissertation was awarded the 2019 Doctoral Prize from the United Kingdom Association for Studies in Innovation, Science and Technology. Her research has been published in several leading social science journals, including Social Studies of Science, Big Data & Society and Science, Technology & Human Values. Since 2024, and moving to Israel, Clémence is a Branco Weiss fellow. She was awarded the prestigious Branco Weiss fellowship for a five-year research project investigating the ethics and politics of Big Data in healthcare.
Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Pinel C. (2026) ‘Constructing the real world of Real-World Data’. Big Data & Society. Online first.
Pinel C., Dam M.S. (2026) ‘Personalised medicine platforms: Turning the ‘healthy sick’ and the ‘worried well’ into valuable data’. Social Studies of Science. Online first.
Pinel C., Raz A. (2026) ‘The experimentality of Real-World Evidence Studies: Turning a population into value’. SSM – Qualitative Research in Health. Vol.10. Doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2026.100812.
Shaw J., Pinel C., Donia J., Van Hoyweghen I. (2026) ‘Global governance of commercial actors in data-intensive health innovation: Introduction to the special issue’. Policy Studies. Vol 47(2), pp.211-224. Doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2026.2629332.
Pinel C., Wyatt D., Faulkner-Gurstein R. (2025) ‘The Hidden Labor of Translation: Introduction to Special Issue’. Science, Technology & Human Values. Vol 50(2), pp. 242-250. Doi.org/10.1177/01622439241310743.
Pinel C., Svendsen MN (2024) ‘Domesticating Data: traveling and value making in the data economy’. Social Studies of Science. Vol 54(3), pp.429-450. Doi.org/10.1177/03063127231212506.
Hoeyer K., Green S., A Martani A., Middleton A., and Pinel C. (2024) Health in data space. Formative and Experiential Dimensions of Cross-Border Health Data Sharing. Big Data and Society. Vol 11(1): 1-14. Doi/10.1177/20539517231224258.
Pinel C., Green S., Svendsen M.N. (2023) ‘Slowing down decay: Biological clocks in personalized medicine’. Frontiers in Sociology. Vol. 8. Doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1111071.
Pinel C. (2022) ‘What counts as the environment in epigenetics? Knowledge and ignorance in the entrepreneurial university’. Science as Culture. Vol. 31(3), pp. 311-333. Doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2022.2043840.
Zimmermann, B.; Wagenaar, H.; Kieslich, K.; … Pinel, C.; … & Weiss, E. (2022) ‘Democratic research: Setting up a research commons for a qualitative, comparative, longitudinal interview study during the COVID-19 pandemic’. SSM – Qualitative Research in Health. Vol. 2. Doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmqr.2022.100158.
Pinel C., Svendsen M. (2021) ‘In search of ‘extra data’: Making tissues flow from personal to personalised medicine’. Big Data & Society. Doi.org/10.1177/20539517211035664.
Pinel C. (2021) ‘Renting Valuable Assets: Knowledge and Value Production in Academic Science’. Science, Technology & Human Values. Vol. 42 (2), pp. 275-297. Doi.org/10.1177/0162243920911974.
Pinel C., Prainsack B., McKevitt C. (2020) ‘Caring for data: Value Creation in a data-intensive research laboratory’. Social Studies of Science. Vol. 50(2), pp. 175-197. Doi.org/10.1177/0306312720906567.
Pinel C. (2020) ‘When more data means better results: Abundance and scarcity in research collaborations in epigenetics’. Social Science Information. Vol. 59(1), pp. 35–58. Doi.org/10.1177/0539018419895456.
Pinel C., Prainsack B., McKevitt C. (2018) ‘Markers as mediators: A review and synthesis of epigenetics literature’, Biosocieties, Vol. 13 (1), pp. 276-303. Doi.org/10.1057/s41292-017-0068-x.
Gramaglia C., Pinel C, Daniau C, Salvio C., Kermarec F. (2015) ‘Mobiliser la sociologie pour une intervention de santé publique attentive au contexte local’, Environnement, Risques et Santé, Vol. 14(6), pp. 490-501. Doi.org/10.1684/ers.2015.0818.
Chapters in Edited Volumes
Pinel C. (in press) ‘Unblack-Boxing Real-World Data: studying the knowledge politics of health data’, in Barben D., Bauer A. and Aarden E. (ed). Edward Elgar Handbook on Knowledge Politics.
McKevitt C., Fudge N., Pinel C. (2020) ‘Involving patients and publics in health care’, in: Gulliford M. and Jessop E. (ed). Healthcare Public Health: Improving health services through population science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 33-45.
Book reviews
Pinel, C. (2020), McGoey, L. The unknowers: how strategic ignorance rules the world, London, UK, Zed Books, 2019, 369 pp. Critical Policy Studies. Doi: 10.1080/19460171.2020.1768422.
Pinel, C. (2017), Hilgartner, S. Reordering Life: Knowledge and Control in the Genomics Revolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 2017. 368 pp. Sociology of Health & Illness. Doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12677.
Last Updated Date : 13/11/2026
