Recent studies confirm that race is a crude and inaccurate tool to represent human diversity. While rejecting race as a valid biological category is important, Ageliki would like to emphasise that we should simultaneously acknowledge its role as a social category. Race is not useful in thinking about health risks or human past. Nevertheless adopting outdated racial models may have serious consequences on our health and distort our views of human history and ancestry.

Ageliki Lefkaditou is a historian of science with background in biological sciences. In her current research, she is interested in the political potency of scholarly—mainly biological—accounts of identity and origins, how they affect and are affected by social and cultural understandings, and how to study their multiple workings within society.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx