Post by Kimberly Jamie As part of my Institute of Advanced Studies grant, I organised a workshop in November 2019 bringing together researchers from across social, biological, and chemical sciences with an interest in antimicrobial resistance (AMR). I started off the day by giving an overview of the IAS project on antibacterial clay. In this talk, I suggested that social scientists need to pay closer attention to the material life of antimicrobial products and think about wha

Post by Hester Hockin-Boyers On the 11th of November, my colleague (and wonderful supervisor) Kim Jamie and I will each be presenting papers on (1) ‘transformation photos’ and (2) young mothers and everyday stigma. This event will kick off the first of many health-group staff/postgraduate research seminars, which aim to bring together students and researchers with an interest in health to learn about some of the emerging work being undertaken within the group. BACKGROUND: For

Post by Kimberly Jamie On Tuesday 18th June, I went to an event for early career researchers (ECRs) organised by the British Sociological Association’s Early Career Forum. I’m not an early career researcher anymore but I was invited to sit on a panel to chat with PhD students and ECRs about “doing” academia. This wasn’t an event to share research findings or pitch a paper. It was, instead, a supportive space to talk about academic life and the particular challenges that ECRs

This post is by Tiago Moreira The Health and Social Theory group hosted a presentation by Marcos Azevedo, of the Ecoles des hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Centre de Recherche medicine, sciences, sante mentale, societe (CERMES3), on his on-going research on socio-spatial issues on home-based mental health care in France. Entitled ‘Places, Spaces, Territories’, the presentation drew on Marco’s ethnographic fieldwork in three different home-based mental health care serv

This post is by Keming Yang. During the past twelve years, I have been interested in cross-national comparative studies on loneliness and social isolation, so when the delegates from the London office of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) came to Durham to encourage us to apply for their fellowships, I told myself this was an opportunity I must jump on. The only issue was, I did not know any researchers in Japan, let alone any specialists on loneliness! Fortun

Post by Keming Yang With the support of Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience (IHRR) and Department of Sociology, our research group organized the second workshop on Social Interpretations and Reactions to Air Pollution on the 29th of May. While the first workshop focused on the sources of air pollution and the meaning of air pollution from a public health perspective, presenters at this workshop addressed various social aspects of air pollution. Dr Keming Yang, who initia

On Wednesday 22nd May 2019, Kimberly Jamie was on BBC Look North and the Emma Barnett show on BBC Radio 5 Live sharing thoughts and findings from a Cancer Research UK grant which focused on health beliefs and behaviours of adolescent mothers. The project was funded by CRUK as part of their focus on health promotion and cancer prevention in “harder to reach” groups and looked at health among young mothers in three areas of the UK – Belfast, Bristol and Northeast England. As pa

Brian Castellani had a chance to sit down with David Byrne, Jonathan Warren and Jonathan Wistow -- three faculty in the Deparment of Sociology at Durham University -- to discuss their recent work on the complexities of globalised, post-industrial (or should we say, deindustralised) life in North East England. Here is a link to the interview:

POST BY KIMBERLY JAMIE For the academic year 2019-20, I will be Co-PI (along with Gary Sharples from Biosciences) on an interdisciplinary project funded by the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) at Durham. The project looks at antibacterial clay therapies, which are becoming increasingly important in the context of the current antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis. It’s predicted by the British government that AMR will overtake cancer as the leading cause of death in the nex

The health and social theory group held the first of two seminars on the sociology of air pollution. As we have seen recently in the media (See this article in the Guardian), air pollution is very much a key concern, particularly in terms of its negative effects on UK health overall and, more particularly, on vulnerable groups within the country -- as well as the globe in general. Throughout the world, such groups include the elderly, children and those living in urban and m

Much thanks to Jonathan Wistow for presenting as part of our two-day seminar for the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus. Jonathan did an excellent job of exploring how public health needs to embrace a wider view that situates the lives of people withn the larger political economy in which they live, particularly in terms of health inequalities. It was particularly insightful, given that we held our seminar in Northern England; and we gave thought to ho

Written by Kimberly Jamie On Monday 18th February 2019, the Department of Sociology hosted a day-long event dedicated to sociological analysis of “fake news”. For this members of the Health and Social Theory Research Group (Kim Jamie, Tiago Moreira and Brian Castellani) participated in a session where we questioned whether people have had enough of “experts”, and whether fake news is bad for our health. These are big questions to ask and even bigger questions to try and answe