Dr Mayli Mertens

Mayli investigates the ways in which sense-making—through human and artificial cognition—shapes the physical world around us and how feedback loops affect such processes. Her work in medical epistemology and ethics, analyses how knowledge generated in biology, psychology, and medicine—knowledge typically mediated through technology—increases and limits the ability to cure disease or foster health. Reflexive predictions such as self-fulfilling and self-defeating prophecies are central to Mayli's work. Currently, she’s investigating the epistemic and ethical implications of predictions in genetics, specifically the impact genetic risk profiling has on gene expression. Mayli was previously awarded the ‘Best Formal Paper by a Graduate Student’ by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics and received the honorary award ‘Excellence in Teaching’ from the Yale interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics where she teaches on ‘Cognitive, Cultural, and Contextual Bias in Medicine’. After obtaining her PhD, she joined the Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies at the University of Copenhagen.