University of Exeter

Faculty Member, ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis), and Department of Sociology and Philosophy

Research Fellow

College of Social Sciences and International Studies

About

My interest and expertise lies in the application of insights and perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and medical sociology to the study of novel and emerging biotechnologies. More specifically, I am concerned with understanding the ways in which these technologies are shaped by a variety of social factors – including institutional and regulatory cultures as well as the perspectives of developers and prospective users – throughout the course of their development and deployment into practice; and how, in turn, new biomedical technologies shape and reconfigure our understandings of disease, health, and the ‘sorts’ of people we are or can be.
I have an MA (by Research and Thesis) and PhD from the interdisciplinary Institute for Science and Society (ISS) at the University of Nottingham. My doctoral thesis took the use of human Growth Hormone (hGH) to treat childhood short stature and as an anti-ageing treatment as a case study to examine the bioethical concept of human enhancement. Deploying a socio-technical history of the drug I examined the ways in which some applications of hGH (for example to treat growth-hormone deficient short statured children) have become legitimised and accepted into routine practice while others are contested as non-medical ‘enhancements’. Between my MA and PhD I worked as a research associate on a Pharmacy Practice Trust-commissioned report on emerging biotechnologies, including stem cell technology, cancer vaccines and genetic tests, co-authored with Professor Paul Martin (Nottingham). I also have a first degree in Biology from the University of St Andrews which allows me to bring a level of understanding to the technical aspects of these new biotechnologies. 
In 2011 I joined Egenis from the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at York, where I had been a work-package leader on the EC Framework Programme 7 Regenerative medicine in Europe (REMEDiE) project. My primary role at Egenis is to work with Dr Susan Kelly and the Healthcare Technologies and Society (HTS) group to support ongoing work and develop new projects in the core area of novel applications of genomic technology in healthcare.

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