Woman Who Got Her PhD in &x27;the Politics of Smell’ Explains What She Actually Does for a Living (Exclusive) Meredith WilshereSat, April 18, 2026 at 9:30 PM UTC 0 Credit: Dr. Ally Louks Dr. Ally Louks studies the cultural and social significance of smell and how it shapes identity and literature Dr. Louks went viral in November 2024 after sharing on X that she earned her PhD in olfactory ethics, the "politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose." When talking with PEOPLE, she breaks down the most common myths about smell Dr.
Woman Who Got Her PhD in 'the Politics of Smell’ Explains What She Actually Does for a Living (Exclusive)
Meredith WilshereSat, April 18, 2026 at 9:30 PM UTC
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Credit: Dr. Ally Louks -
Dr. Ally Louks studies the cultural and social significance of smell and how it shapes identity and literature
Dr. Louks went viral in November 2024 after sharing on X that she earned her PhD in olfactory ethics, the "politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose."
When talking with PEOPLE, she breaks down the most common myths about smell
Dr. Ally Louks thinks about the power of smell far more than the average person.
The 28-year-old academic, known as the “doctor of smell,” got her PhD in olfactory ethics, the "politics of smell in modern and contemporary prose," in November 2024.
While Dr. Louks knows you might not understand her work, the now-viral author talks to PEOPLE about the most common misconceptions about her job and smell in general.
"My work as a public academic is really interdisciplinary and holistic," she says. "I'm invested in translating academic work in the sciences, social sciences and humanities, for a public audience, mostly as it relates to smell."
"I'm also a literary scholar. I'm really interested in the social significance of smell and how smell shapes our identities and how it's represented in literature," she adds.
Credit: Dr. Ally Louks
Dr. Louks says her first interest in studying and understanding smell came from perfume advertisements.
"I realized they never seemed to mention the actual smell of the perfume that they're attempting to sell," she explains. "Instead, they relied on this aspirational imagery and created these allegories of taste and desire and ambition."
She then shifted her focus to how smell works in literature, which she discovered was "extremely rich."
"I made it my mission to fully understand why so many authors were representing smell in such interesting and politically charged ways," Dr. Louks tells PEOPLE.
Dr. Louks completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge's Peterhouse in 2024. Her dissertation was titled Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose.
To celebrate the achievement, she shared a photo of herself on X (formerly Twitter) and it went viral, amassing over 130 million views.
She says that a vast majority of people misunderstand smell, and by extension, her work around it. Through her work and posts on X, Dr. Louks hopes to dispel common misconceptions about smell in daily life, pop culture and beyond.
She tells PEOPLE, "The thing that most interested me was how misunderstood smell is."
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"Most people understand that smell is overlooked, that we don't really think about it very often, that it happens unconsciously a lot of the time," Dr. Louks shares.
Credit: Dr. Ally Louks
In fact, she says most things people believe about smell are not true.
"They've arisen out of histories of inequality and also general myths like that have been perpetuated, by these particularly prominent figures, like philosophers from Aristotle to Plato to Kant who've all had really negative things to say about smell to prominent scientists like Charles Darwin and Paul Broker who have made these mistaken claims about smell that have entered our cultural consciousness and shaped the way that we think about smell," Dr. Louks says.
One of the most common misconceptions she hears is that smell preferences are "innate" and "we're born with them," which she insists isn't true.
"We have to be taught how to relate to smell. A young child will happily pick up a really disgusting, stinky thing on the floor, and won't show any kind of disgust towards their own feces or vomit or anything that we consider repulsive, because they haven't yet been acculturated," she explains. "They haven't yet been taught how to relate to smell."
She says that it has "really significant implications for how we relate to other people, because so many people throughout history have been regarded as smelly."
Another myth that she hears in her work is that humans are bad at smelling.
"We tend to think that we're not very good at smelling in comparison to other animals, but actually, when we've tested this scientifically, we come out almost on top," she shares. "In fact, we can rival dogs in about a third of the cases of the aroma molecules that they've tested. It's not the smell that is the problem. It's not our kind of biological capacity to smell. It's the way that we view it in our culture."
Dr. Louks uses her research and her X account to teach people more about how we relate to smell in our culture and everyday lives. After going viral, she frequently gets tagged in posts about smells, whether it's a stereotype about food or people trying to rethink how they feel about certain smells.
"I do think that I've gained a sort of basic level of respect on the platform by continuing to engage in good faith," she shares. "I think that's really important. Even if people aren't really interested in my work, most people are now relatively respectful towards me because they know that I'm not going to attack anyone."
"I'm here to educate people and to have conversations with people. I'm really not interested in arguing online. I have much better things to do with my life than argue with strangers on the internet," Dr. Louks says.
Dr. Louks is also working on a book, titled Under Your Nose, which comes out in spring 2027 and will examine how smell appears in pop culture, citing recent and relevant works.
"The nice thing about smell is that obviously it's part of almost all of our experiences. A small percentage of people lack a sense of smell, but most people do," she shares. "It has actually infiltrated all of these different stories. It's just that we don't tend to notice it because we're not tuned to thinking about smell in general. It's been really fun to show the hidden underbelly of these different stories."
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: April 19, 2026 at 12:45AM on Source: MORNING MAG
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