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Lecture Abstract:
Genetic Ancestry Testing (GAT) has rapidly expanded worldwide, raising important sociological questions about how test results reshape individuals’ racial, ethnic, and Indigenous identities. In this lecture, Professor Wendy D. Roth will present findings from both qualitative interviews with Americans of diverse racial backgrounds who purchased GATs and a randomized controlled experiment. Drawing on these studies, she proposes the theory of“genetic options,” which highlights how individuals selectively interpret parts of their test results according to their identity aspirations and social evaluations. At the same time, these identity choices are constrained by the racial and ethnic percentages presented in the GAT reports.

Speaker Bio 
Wendy D. Roth is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on how social processes challenge racial and ethnic boundaries, transform classification systems, and reshape people’s understandings of the nature of race. She is the author of Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race (Stanford University Press, 2012), a work that has received multiple awards. Her recent research examines how contemporary genetic ancestry testing influences individuals’ racial and ethnic identities, interactions around racial concepts, and evaluations of race. Her work has been published in leading academic journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Social Studies of Science. In 2026, she will serve as President of the Eastern Sociological Society.