Dr Elena Gonzalez-Polledo FHEA
Staff details

I am a social anthropologist specialising in gender theory, science and technology studies, and digital anthropology. I have conducted research in the United Kingdom, North America and Europe.
I am currently working on two projects - an ethnography of everyday biotechnological experimentation, and a global anthropology of bioinformation.
Teaching and Supervision
Research interests
Data Worlds and Futures: Archives, Bio information and Evidence (Wellcome Trust funded)
Communicating Chronic Pain - Interdisciplinary methods for non-verbal data (NCRM funded)
MEDEA - Models and their effects on development paths: an ethnographic and comparative approach (EU FP7)
I co-edit the book series Theorizing Ethnography: Concept, Context, Critique, published with Routledge Anthropology.
Publications and research outputs
Book
Boyce, P; Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S. 2019. Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2017. Transitioning: Matter, Gender, Thought. London: Rowman and Littlefield International. ISBN 9781783488445
Edited Book
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S, eds. 2021. Bioinformation Worlds and Futures. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780367409456
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Tarr, Jen, eds. 2017. Painscapes: Communicating Pain. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan. ISBN 978-1-349-95271-7
Book Section
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S. 2021. Bioinformation Worlds and Futures: Introduction. In: EJ Gonzalez-Polledo and S Posocco, eds. Bioinformation Worlds and Futures. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780367409456
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2019. Wild Gender. In: Paul Boyce; EJ Gonzalez-Polledo and Silvia Posocco, eds. Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989
Boyce, Paul; Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, Silvia. 2019. Queering Knowledge: An Introduction. In: P Boyce; EJ Gonzalez-Polledo and S Posocco, eds. Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989
Franklin, Sarah; Boyce, P; Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S. 2019. Conceptuality in Relation: Sarah Franklin in Conversation with Silvia Posocco, Paul Boyce, and EJ Gonzalez-Polledo. In: Paul Boyce; EJ Gonzalez-Polledo and Silvia Posocco, eds. Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2018. Experiments in living: the value of indeterminacy in trans art. In: Catherine M. Alexander and Andrew Sanchez, eds. Indeterminacy: Essays on Waste, Value and the Imagination. 7 Oxford: Berghahn. ISBN 9781789200096
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2017. Painscapes. In: JS Tarr and EJ Gonzalez-Polledo, eds. Painscapes: Communicating Pain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-349-95271-7
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2015. Politics for industrial machines. Techno-political transitions in a Spanish steel plant. In: Victoria Goddard and S Narotzky, eds. Industry and work in contemporary capitalism: Models, markets and crisis in the global system. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-138-01464-0
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2010. 'No se que otra cosa podria ser’: Medicina entre la elección y el cuidado en la transición FTM. In: M Misse and G Coll-Planas, eds. El Genero Desordenado. Criticas en torno a la patologización de la transexualidad (with a foreword by Judith Butler). Barcelona: Egales. ISBN 978-84-92813-20-9
Article
Sarker, A; Lakamana, S; Guo, Y; Ge, Y; Leslie, A; Okunromade, O; Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ; Perrone, J and Mackenzie-Brown, AM. 2023. #ChronicPain: Automated Building of a Chronic Pain Cohort from Twitter Using Machine Learning. Health Data Science, 3, 0078. ISSN 2765-8783
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S. 2022. Forensic Apophenia: Sensing the Bioinformation Archive. Anthropological Quarterly, 95(1), pp. 97-123. ISSN 0003-5491
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S. 2021. Archives, promises, values: forensic infrastructures in times of austerity. Critique of Anthropology, 41(1), pp. 3-20. ISSN 0308-275X
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Posocco, S. 2021. Arquivos, promessas, valores: Infraestruturas forenses em tempos de austeridade. Lugar Comun: Estudos de midia, cultura e democracia, 59, pp. 122-166.
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Sabate, Irene. 2019. Flexible industrial work in the European periphery: factory regimes and changing working class cultures in the Spanish steel industry. Anthropology of Work Review, 40(1), pp. 15-24. ISSN 0883-024X
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2018. Can Digital Health Save Democracy? Meeting the Cosmopolitical Challenge of Digital Worlds. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 6(2), pp. 631-643. ISSN 2195-3325
Boyce, P; Engebretsen, E; Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ; Posocco, S; Newton, E and Lewin, E. 2018. A commitment to difference: An interview with Esther Newton. Sexualities, 21(5-6), pp. 951-969. ISSN 1363-4607
Tarr, JS; Cornish, F and Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2018. Beyond the binaries: Reshaping pain communication through arts workshops. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(3), pp. 577-592. ISSN 0141-9889
Tarr, JS and Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2017. On liveness: using arts workshops as a research method. Qualitative Research, 18(1), pp. 36-52. ISSN 1468-7941
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ and Tarr, JS. 2016. The thing about pain: The remaking of illness narratives in chronic pain expressions on social media. New Media & Society, 18(8), pp. 1455-1472. ISSN 1461-4448
Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ. 2016. Chronic media worlds: Social media and the problem of pain communication on Tumblr. Social Media + Society, 2(1), pp. 1-11. ISSN 2056-3051
Boyce, P; Engebretsen, E; Gonzalez-Polledo, EJ; Hendricks, T; Hossain, A; Posocco, S; Riley, T; Tucker, H and Graham, M. 2015. Anthropologists Are Talking about Queer Anthropology. Ethnos, 81(2), ISSN 0014-1844
Thesis
Gonzalez-Polledo Bermudez, Elena. 2010. From Transition To Transitioning: An Anthropological Study of Female To Male Transsexuality. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London
Further profile content
Teaching
I joined Goldsmiths as a lecturer in September 2017, having completed a PhD in the department of anthropology in 2010. In the meantime, I was a post-doc researcher in the FP7 funded project MEDEA - Models and their effects on development paths: an ethnographic and comparative approach. I also held an LSE Fellowship (2012-2014) and a Course Tutor position (2014-2016) at the London School of Economics. Before joining the department, I worked as a Lecturer in the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Social Sciences.