Core Department Faculty Member
- Joanna Kempner
- Associate Professor
- Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2004
- Email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Office: Davison Hall, 134
- Personal Website
- Twitter: joannakempner
- Curriculum Vitae
- Google Scholar
Joanna Kempner, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University, is an award-winning sociologist of science, medicine, and inequality, and the author of Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine (Hachette Books 2024) and Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health (Chicago 2014). Kempner’s research gives voice to those without power and asks challenging questions about how medicine talks about, understands, and makes policies for those it serves.
Kempner has held visiting positions and fellowships at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, and has served on multiple editorial boards and in leadership positions across academia and within headache advocacy. Her research appears in top journals across multiple disciplines, including Science, PLoS Medicine, Neurology, and Social Science & Medicine and is often featured in the media. You can learn more about Joanna Kempner at www.joannakempner.com.
- In the Public Eye:
- The Promise and Future of Psychedelics, The Pulse. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/01/1196552850/promise-of-psychedelics
- Host Maiken Scott interviews Joanna Kempner about Clusterbusters, a patient group that developed a psychedelic protocol to treat cluster headache. “How people with cluster headache become unexpected pioneers,” The Microdose, June 10, 2024. https://substack.com/home/post/p-145276454
- Michael Pollan’s substack, The Microdose, ran an excerpt of Psychedelic Outlaws, which explains the rise of psychedelic medicine through the lens of an unexpected group of pioneers: people desperate to find a treatment for cluster headache, one of the most excruciating diseases in the world.
- A documentary film entitled Out of My Head that explores migraine, featuring Kempner’s research alongside an intimate portrayal of her life with migraine.
- Faculty Article(s):
- Collective self-experimentation in patient-led research: How online health communities foster innovation
- Standards Without Labs: Drug Development in the Psychedelic Underground.
- Collective self-experimentation in patient-led research: How online health communities foster innovation
- Faculty Bookshelf:
- Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health
- Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine
- Program Areas:
- Culture and Cognition
- Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment
- Health, Population, and Biomedicine
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Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine
Hachette Books , 2024
Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health
Chicago , 2014
