Boston College Sociologist Wins Book Award

Sharlene Hesse-Biber, a professor of sociology at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, has been selected to received the 2015 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award. Alpha Sigma Nu is an honor society for scholars at Jesuit institutions of higher education.

Professor Hesse-Biber is being honored for her book Waiting for Cancer to Come: Women’s Experience With Genetic Testing and Medical Decision Making for Breast and Ovarian Cancer (University of Michigan Press, 2014). The judging panel said the book was “beautifully written, with serious attention to science and a welcome focus on the inevitably ethical dimensions of scientific progress and the role of politics and economics in shaping it.”

Professor Hesse-Biber holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in sociology, all from the University of Michigan.