M.A. Mary Allison Jones

Doctoral Candidate

Science and Technology Policy

Mary completed her master's degree in global studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO Argentina). She focused on the replication and exacerbation of structural hegemonies and social inequalities in the digital sphere, specifically documenting the communicative practices and semantic decision-making of lesbians on TikTok. Before her master’s degree, Mary worked on international development projects in the Middle East and South Asia providing psychosocial support and remedial education to children in conflict-affected areas. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Prof. Dr. Ruth Müller’s team for Science and Technology Policy at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). 

During her time at TUM, Mary has focused on the social and academic discourse on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in Germany as a part of the ForFamily project. In her dissertation, she explores the social and academic discourses on the claim that early-life adversity affects long-term health outcomes; a hypothesis that was pioneered in the adverse childhood experiences (ACE) study. Informed by Keller’s sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, her project delves into how this body of knowledge is constructed, communicated, and received in the German context from the perspective of newspapers, researchers, scientific publications, and parents. Her work has a specific interest in how family is constructed and made culpable in these claims, how responsibility is conceptualized and ascribed, and what role social justice and (anti) discrimination play in this field.