Katelyn Esmonde, PhD
Education
- PhD, (University of Maryland)
- MA (Purdue University)
- BSc (McGill University)
Graduate Program Supervision
In Profile
Katelyn Esmonde’s research focuses on the ethics, practices, and policies of health information and technology, focusing on two main themes. First, she examines the ethical challenges arising from personal, institutional, research, and state efforts to promote health, often with a focus on digital health technologies and physical activity. This work has spanned numerous contexts, including digital contact tracing in the COVID-19 pandemic response, the US state-level COVID-19 response, physical activity public health campaigns such as Play Streets, and mobile health in low- and middle-income countries. Second, she explores how digital health technologies, such as mobile health and fitness apps, shape how people experience physical activity and their body. Esmonde has explored this question as it relates to gendered personal fitness practices, as well as institutional uses of digital technologies in workplace wellness programs and in physical education. She draws on qualitative methods, including document analysis, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews.
Featured Publications and Projects
Books
- Kahn, J., Ali, J., Barnhill, A., Cicero, A., Esmonde, K., …Watson, M. (2020). Digital contact tracing for pandemic response: Ethics and governance guidance. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals
- Esmonde, K., Jones, J., Johns, M., Hutler, B., Faden, R., & Barnhill, A. (in press). ‘Staying in the lane’ of public health?: Boundary-work in the roles of state health officials and experts in COVID-19 policymaking. Sociology of Health & Illness, 46(5), 1004-1022. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13751
- Esmonde, K., Roth, S. M., & Walker, A. (2023). A social and ethical framework for providing health information obtained from combining genetics and fitness tracking data. Technology in Society, 74, 102297.
- Esmonde, K. (2023). Exercising caution: A case for ethics in physical activity promotion. Public Health Ethics, 16(1), 77-85.
- Esmonde, K. (2021). “From fat and frazzled to fit and happy”: Governing the unhealthy employee through quantification and wearable technologies. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(1), 113-127.
- E smonde, K., & Jette, S. (2020). Assembling the “Fitbit subject”: A Foucauldian-sociomaterialist examination of social class, gender, and self-surveillance on Fitbit community message boards. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 24(3), 299-314.
- Esmonde, K. (2020). “There’s only so much data you can handle in your life”: Accommodating and resisting self-surveillance in women’s running and fitness tracking practices. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 12(1), 76-90.
- Esmonde, K. (2019). Training, tracking, and traversing: Digital materiality and the production of bodies and/in space in runners’ fitness tracking practices. Leisure Studies, 38(6), 804-817.
Visit Google Scholar for a comprehensive list of publications.
Graduate Student Opportunities
Please contact Katelyn Esmonde for more information.
Additional Information
Academic Appointments and Research Affiliations
- School of Kinesiology
- Faculty of Information & Media Studies
- Director of the Health Information Science graduate program
Media Highlights
- Esmonde, K., & Pollack Porter, K. (2020). Distance learning makes it harder for kids to exercise, especially in low-income communities. The Conversation U.S..
- Esmonde, K. (2020). For contact tracing to work, authorities must regain the trust of Black Americans. Vox.
- Esmonde, K. (2020). What celeb trainer Jillian Michaels got wrong about Lizzo and body positivity. Vox.
