This article discusses teaching experiences with female students on a post-graduate program in health sciences, an area marked by the biomedical paradigm. The encounter with a new mode of producing science – situated, relational, ethically and politically engaged, and self-reflective – promotes the deconstruction of epistemology and provides an opening for individuals to position themselves as new subjects of knowledge. In this theoretical and empirical undertaking of (self)investigation, looking at the body, health and disease from an intersectional perspective prompts a subjective heuristic shift in the researcher, with her social and gender, race, and generational labels. To encounter a research question is also to encounter with oneself as a health professional, within your gender, class and race/ethnicity. It is argued that social studies of science and decolonial feminist studies can help public universities provide society with health professionals who recognize themselves in the public they treat.
Keywords
Gender; Science; Public health; Professional education; Higher education