Joanna Kempner
is an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University, where she investigates how culture, politics, and power shape what we know — and don’t know — about the body, the mind, and medicine.
Her newest book, Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine (Hachette, 2024), tells the remarkable story of Clusterbusters, a patient-led community that discovered psilocybin could treat cluster headaches — one of the most painful conditions known to medicine. Through their fight for relief, Kempner reveals a sweeping history of psychedelics and pain research, a window into the early years of the so-called “psychedelic renaissance,” and an indictment of the rules and regulations meant to safeguard biomedicine.
Her first book, Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health (Chicago 2014), won multiple awards for its exploration of how stigma and gender bias shape the treatment of pain.
Across both works, Kempner traces how people in pain — often dismissed or disbelieved — create new forms of knowledge when institutions fail them. She writes and speaks across academic, clinical, and public audiences, collaborating with researchers and advocates to imagine more just, inclusive, and accountable systems of care.
Kempner’s research is published in a range of academic journals, including Science, PLoS Medicine, Social Science & Medicine, and Neurology, and is often featured in the media.
A Next Big Idea Club “Must-Read Book”
