Laura Mamo is Director of the Health Equity Institute, Professor of Public Health.
Her work lies at the intersection of medical sociology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies of science, technology, and medicine. Her research and teaching focus on sexuality and its politics in medicine, science, and health discourse, practice, and resistance. Mamo is the author of the forthcoming book Sexualizing Cancer: HPV and the Gendered Politics of Cancer Prevention (University of Chicago Press, 2023); Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience (Duke University Press, 2007); co-author of Living Green: Communities that Sustain (New Society Press, 2010); and co-editor of Biomedicalization Studies: Technoscience and Transformations of Health, Illness and U.S. Biomedicine (Duke University Press, 2010).
Mamo is the co-founder of The Beyond Bullying Project, a multimedia school-based queer sexuality and gender project with Jessica Fields, Jen Gilbert, and Nancy Lesko. Mamo’s research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Mamo earned her Ph.D. in 2002 from UCSF and her BA from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She joined the faculty at SFSU as a Health Equity Professor of Public Health in 2010 following appointments as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Mamo, L. (2023) Sexualizing Cancer: HPV and the Politics of Cancer Prevention (University of Chicago Press).
Mamo, L., Peréz, A., Rios, L. (2022) “HPV Self-sampling: Cervical Cancer Prevention, Sexual Health Promotion, and the Politics of Health.” Sociology of Health and Illness. Vol. 44, Issue 1: 218-235. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9566.13421.
Mamo, L., Gilbert, J., J. Fields, D. (2021) “Orienting Toward Possibility: Girls and Bisexuality at School.” Health Promotion Practice. 2021 Vol. 22, 23S–32S. 10.1177/15248399211045019.
Kenney, M., and L. Mamo. (2019) "The Imaginary of Precision Public Health," Medical Humanities. Vol. 46, Issue 3, pp. 46:192-203. 10.1136/medhum-2018-011597
Gilbert, J., J. Fields, L. Mamo and N. Lesko. (2018) "Intimate Possibilities: The Beyond Bullying Project and Stories of LGBTQ Sexuality and Gender in US Schools." Harvard Educational Review. 88(2): 163-183.
Epstein, S., and L. Mamo. (2017) "The Proliferation of Sexual Health: Diverse Social Problems and the Legitimation of Sexuality." Soc Sci Med 188 (Sep 2017): 175-90.
L. Mamo and S. Epstein. (2016) “The New Sexual Politics of Cancer: Oncoviruses, Disease Prevention, and Sexual Health Promotion,” BioSocieties, 12(3): 367-391.
Mamo, L. (2007) Queering Reproduction: Achieving Pregnancy in the Age of Technoscience. Duke University Press.
