Natalie Boero is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at San Jose State University. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 2006 and A BA in Sociology from Linfield College in 1996. Her first book, Killer Fat: Media, Medicine and Morals in the American Obesity Epidemic was published in August 2012 by Rutgers University Press.

In Killer Fat, Dr. Boero examines how and why obesity emerged as a major public health concern and national obsession in recent years. Using primary sources and in-depth interviews, Boero enters the world of bariatric surgeries, Weight Watchers, and Overeaters Anonymous to show how common expectations of what bodies are supposed to look like help to determine what sorts of interventions and policies are considered urgent in containing this new kind of disease.

Dr. Boero is also is the author of Bypassing Blame: Bariatric Surgery and the Case of Biomedical Failure" in Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in U.S. Biomedicine and "Fat Kids, Working Moms, and the 'Epidemic of Obesity': Race, Class, and Mother-Blame," in The Fat Studies Reader and along with Dr. CJ Pascoe recently published "Pro-anorexia Communities and Online Interaction: Bringing the Pro-ana Body Online" in the journal, Body & Society.