Charmaine DM Royal, PhD, MS
Robert O. Keohane Professor of African & African American Studies
Duke University
Faculty Associate, Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine
charmaine.royal@duke.edu
Charmaine Royal, PhD is a human geneticist and bioethicist whose research and scholarly pursuits span ethical, social, scientific, clinical, and policy implications of human genetics and genomics. She focuses primarily on issues at the intersection of genetics and ‘race’, with a two-fold goal of 1) dispelling notions of the validity of biological human races and racial hierarchies and 2) dismantling intellectual and institutional structures that are based on these false notions. Professor Royal's transdisciplinary and global approach to her work is rooted in a commitment to enhancing the conduct and applications of human genetics and genomics research so as to maximize its benefits and minimize its harms to research participants, patients, consumers, and societies. Her research has been published in a wide range of journals covering the life sciences, medicine, social sciences, and humanities. These include Science, Nature Genetics, The New England Journal of Medicine, American Anthropologist, Race and Social Problems, and The American Journal of Bioethics.