Stef Shuster

Stef M. Shuster is an associate professor at Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Sociology. They earned their Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Iowa, with a certificate in Gender Studies, and their B.A. in Sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington. Their current research agendas in the social aspects of medicine, social movements, gender, and qualitative methodologies are united by an overarching interest in how evidence is a social artifact. In their work, stef considers who constructs evidence, how evidence confers authority to individuals and groups, and how it is mobilized in medical fields, clinical encounters, and social movements. This use of “evidence” as an artifact of broader cultural norms and social contexts is the subject of a book project Stef is working on entitled, Treating Gender: How Providers of Transgender Medicine Respond to Uncertain Expertise, which demonstrates how the gender identity component of trans healthcare raises distinct concerns for providers who use familiar tools for medical decision-making, like clinical guidelines, in an unfamiliar medical arena that is permeated by uncertainty about “best” practices for working with trans patients.