Rate My Professor Amade M’charek

Prof. dr. A.A. (Amade) M'charek is Professor of Anthropology of Science in the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, at the University of Amsterdam. Affiliated with the University since 1999, she advanced to associate professor in 2004 and was appointed full professor on 1 January 2015. She earned her PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2000 with the thesis 'Technologies of similarities and differences: on the interdependence of nature and technology in the Human Genome Diversity Project.' M'charek founded the Master's programme in Forensic Science at the Faculty of Science in 2005 and served as director of the Health, Care & the Body research programme in the anthropology department from 2010 to 2014. Her research examines the intersections of science and society through ethnographic studies of laboratories, particularly in human genetic diversity, population genetics, forensics, and forensic genetics. Key interests include race and racism, politics of diversity, coloniality, ongoing colonialism and extractivism, physical anthropology, criminalistics, human remains, museum collections, and migration-related migrant death in postcolonial contexts. She employs Postcolonial and Feminist Science and Technology Studies alongside material semiotics.

M'charek is principal investigator of major projects, including the ERC Consolidator grant-funded RaceFaceID (2014) on forensic identification, race, and facial recognition; the ERC Advanced grant for Vital Elements and Postcolonial Moves: Forensics as the Art of Paying Attention in a Mediterranean Harbour Town (2022); and co-PI of the NWA project Pressing Matter: Ownership, Value and the Question of Colonial Heritage in Museums. Her seminal book, 'The Human Genome Diversity Project: An Ethnography of Scientific Practice' (Cambridge University Press, 2005), explores scientific practices shaping social categories like race and population. Other key works include co-edited volumes such as 'Forensic DNA Profiling Across the Globe: Exploring Practices and Politics of Technolegal Worlds' (Routledge, 2023), and special issues in journals like Social Studies of Science (2023, 'The Politics of Face and the Trouble with Race'), BioSocieties (2021 and 2020), and American Anthropologist (2020). She has received ERC grants, was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) in 2022 and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW), and holds the Marion R. & Adolph J. Lichtstern Distinguished Research Scholar in Residence position at the University of Chicago in 2025. M'charek supervises PhD students, organizes workshops, and delivers invited lectures on forensics, race, and genetics.