Alison Li: “Science, Hormones and Transformation: Harry Benjamin and the Early History of Transgender Medicine”
March 13, 5:00-6:30, K. C. Choi Building / Liu Institute, 1855 West Mall – Room 120
Reception to follow in the K. C. Choi Building Lounge
Straker lectures: https://sts.arts.ubc.ca/colloquium-events/stephen-straker-memorial-lecture/
This annual STS Lecture honours Stephen Straker who was an historian of science at UBC and played a central role in founding the UBC Science and Technology Program. This year’s Straker Lecturer, Alison Li, is a Canadian historian of science who is known for her work on medical research in Canada, including a 2003 study of J. B. Collip’s contribution to the discovery of insulin. With the 100-year anniversary of this discovery in 2021, Li’s work on this topic has drawn renewed attention.
2025 Straker Lecture: Alison Li’s most recent book, Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution (UNC Press, 2023), is an important study in the medical history of transgender identity and politics and, more broadly, of hormones in the medical and cultural imagination of the 20th century. She focuses on the contributions of German-born American physician Harry Benjamin, who is credited with developing supportive therapies for transgender patients in the 1950s and 1960, working with a community of physicians and psychologists who were sympathetic to sex change. Her current project is Molecules of Influence: Hormones and our Lives for Reaktion Books (Fall 2026.)
