Sophie Wang

IDEAL Center Specialist

Sophie Wang is a second-generation Chinese American invested in making critical social justice lenses on science and technology accessible beyond the ivory tower. She believes deeply in the necessity of epistemic justice (or justice around who and what is seen as valid knowledge producer/production) as part of the larger landscape of liberation. 

In addition to her role as a Specialist in the IDEAL Center, Sophie combines expertise in science and technology studies with her artistic practice to create zines and comics exploring the intersection of science and social justice. Past projects include zines focusing on equity and exclusion in informal science institutions (commissioned by Dr. Emily Dawson), public control of technology development (commissioned by UK ESRC-funded Driverless Futures project), and deconstructing scientific objectivity.

Sophie brings to her work her wide range of interdisciplinary experiences, beginning with her academic training in both Biology and Asian American Studies at Pomona College. After graduating, she maintained a connection with both - working intimately in the preparation and care of vertebrate fossil collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles while managing marketing and development at Kizuna, a Japanese American youth development organization in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo. During this time, she also co-founded Free Radicals, an activist collective dedicated to creating a more socially just, equitable, and accountable science.

In 2017, Sophie turned this power-informed lens onto informal science institutions, completing an MSc in Science, Technology, and Society with a dissertation focused on equity in science museums under Dr. Emily Dawson at University College London. Sophie has also served as an issue editor for Science for the People Magazine, an equity workshop consultant for the UK Association for Science and Discovery Centres, and a data collector for the nationwide Collaboration for Ongoing Visitor Experience Studies (COVES) project.

Sophie is perpetually grateful to the Los Angeles Asian American organizing community and her many years of experience as a participant and trainer with direct action organizing training Summer Activist Training, stage manager with public arts series Tuesday Night Project, and volunteer and consultant with API Equality-LA, in addition to the many intergenerational and profound friendships and mentorships that cannot be described through organizational affiliations.