The David Edge Prize Committee received 46 articles. It shortlisted 6 papers and then concentrated on 3, then on 2 very relevant papers. After a fruitful discussion, the members agreed to award the Prize to Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan’s paper, “Genetic ancestry testing among white nationalists: From identity repair to citizen science,” published in 2019 by Social Studies of Science.
Panofsky and Donovan perform a beautiful analysis of the strategies used by white nationalists, on the website Stormfront, to deal with ‘bad’ or ‘upsetting’ news from their genetic ancestry tests. Their article brings together several themes very relevant to STS scholars, namely, race, genetics and identity, politics, and citizen science. What makes their approach unique and superb are the ways in which they weave together and disentangle these issues to make visible the multiple strategies used by white nationalists to maintain their whiteness in the face of ‘bad news’ or upsetting results.
The 2020 David Edge Prize Committee was Pablo Kreimer (chair), Ana Viseu (co-chair) and Roopali Phadke.
