We are group of researchers, who work across the fields of Science and Technology Studies, Feminist Technoscience Studies, and Media and Cultural Studies.
Celia’s work centres on the body, health, reproduction, sexuality and aging. Her latest book Puberty in Crisis: The Sociology of Early Sexual Development (Cambridge University Press, 2015) focuses on early onset puberty and it brings together feminist science studies, feminist theories of the body, sexuality and girlhood studies to explore the current global ‘crisis’ in sexual development. She has also written about sex hormones (Messengers of Sex: Hormones, biomedicine and feminism, Cambridge University Press 2007), and the so-called ‘designer baby technique’ (preimplantation genetic diagnosis) (Born and Made: an ethnography of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, co-author with Sarah Franklin, Princeton University Press, 2006). Celia has published widely on the topics of gender, feminism, sexuality, IVF and hormone replacement therapy, and aging and technology.
Adrian researches how contemporary cultures affect and are affected by technologies in a broad sense. His research is sociological in that it draws on approaches from the social studies of science and technology, media and cultural studies, with a particular commitment to studies of software. Adrian’s current research projects focus on platforms and platform sociology in the context of science and media, on biosensors and biosensing practices in the context of health and illness, and on data science-related transformations in knowledge in the sciences, education and government. His recent work has been concerned with platform capitalisation and machine learning. He examines linkages between platforms and prediction in much of this work, including projects focused on large image collections, and projects focused on platform infrastructures. Adrian is interested in methodological developments associated with platforms. He views and participates in these developments mainly in the form of digital sociology, but also by continuing work that has long been part of actor network theory-guided approaches in science studies. He has long-standing interests in the social, cultural and political theory, particularly in conceptual developments around materialities, publics, embodiment and experience
Maggie’s work focuses on the sociomaterial relations that underpin, yet are often occluded, in policy development and implementation and in assumptions about innovation and technological change. Her recent ethnographic research has examined telecare and domestic space, governance and the ethics of new care technologies, social effects of disasters and community recovery stories. She teaches and supervises in disaster studies, patient safety, medical uncertainty and health policy and has published widely on the social effects of disaster and technological change in health and social care. Her first book explored the UK’s Trident submarine and missile system as a sociotechnical system (Building the Trident Network, MIT Press 2002). Recent publications include: ‘Displacement: critical insights from flood affected children (2018) Health and Place; ‘From Victims to Actors: the role of children and young people in flood recovery and resilience’ (2018) Environment and Planning C; Biosensing: how citizens’ views illuminate emerging health and social risks’ (2016) Health, Risk and Society; ‘Technologies of recovery, plans practices and entangled politics in disaster’, The Sociological Review (2014) and Animal Disease and Human Trauma, Emotional Geographies of Disaster (2008, Palgrave).
Joann’s research interests include gender, work and organizational health; reproduction and reproductive technologies; self-tracking and data practices. She has worked on a number of different social science projects, both at Lancaster University and internationally, including studies on gender and ageing in plastic surgery, self-tracking devices for older people living with chronic health conditions, the provision of local services to reduce social isolation and lonelines in older populations in Cumbria, improving palliative and end of life care, and the role of army reservists in the British Armed Forces. Her doctoral research examined women’s practices of ovulation biosensing when trying to conceive. She currently works as a research associate in Educational Research at Lancaster University, where she is involved in the ESRC funded project Gender Diversification of the Early Years Workforce: Recruiting, Supporting and Retaining Male Practitioners.
Mette’s research focuses on the body and the biological, health and illness, and data practices. IShe draws on the sociology and anthropology of science and technology, the philosophy of biology, and culture and media studies in her work. Mette’s work has involved looking at biosensing practices, in particular direct-to-consumer genetic testing. In her PhD research, she explored the social life of genetic data, focusing on the biomedicalization processes at work when saliva moves outside the clinic and into online environments and across digital cultures where diverse forms of action and knowledges come into play. She examined four genetic data practices, exploring genetic data not as a product, but as a socio-material relation caught up in biosensing practices fraught with uncertainty and ambivalence. Mette also has an interest in practices of governance, in particular measurement and numbering practices, and how we increasingly ‘move through’ data and data milieus. She currently work as research associate in the Medical School and Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, where she is involved in a project exploring women’s experiences of radiotherapy treatment for gynaecological cancer.