Biography

After I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of California-Los Angeles in 1999, I spent 2 years as a National Institute of Mental Health Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Kentucky Medical School.  I then taught Sociology at Colorado College, an undergraduate ‘university’ in the USA, and was a Lecturer in Medical Sociology at Royal Holloway-University of London for two years before joining Keele as a Senior Lecturer in 2005.

Research and scholarship

A qualitative medical sociologist and social gerontologist, my interests lie in capturing people’s lived experiences in social context and over time, and the life-long consequences of connections between history and biography. I have explored these themes, which are central to ageing and life course studies, in relation to illness and disability, gender and sexuality, and self and identity. For example, I was lead editor of a volume entitled Medicalized Masculinities, the first book to question and critique the recent (and growing) construction of masculinity as a health risk, and sole-authored The Changing of the Guard: Lesbian and Gay Elders, Identity, and Social Change, a monograph on lesbian and gay ageing in socio-historical context. I have also published several articles and book chapters in the areas of lesbian and gay ageing, ageing and the life course, gender and sexuality, and the experience of illness and disability.

Most recently, I have been focusing on HIV and ageing. The 2-year study funded by the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Cross Council Programme, entitled HIV and Later Life (HALL), on which I served as Principal Investigator, ended in October 2013 (see www.keele.ac.uk/hall). We have released our findings, which can be found on our website.  A seminar series funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, entitled ‘Cultures, Communities and Connections in the HIV Sector: Linking Academics, HIV Advocates/Activists, Clinicians, and the Digital Humanities’, on which I am a Co-Investigator, ran from January 2014-July 2016 (see http://www.keele.ac.uk/hivcommunities).

I am currently writing a book on the long-term impacts of gay men’s losses of friends and partners to AIDS on their social worlds and daily lives, based on interview data I collected through the support of the British Academy. Finally, as a Leverhulme Research Fellow (October 2014-October 2016), I explored the role of health social movements and medical developments in the illness experience and in medical practice, with a focus on HIV.

I serve on the editorial boards of Social Theory and Health and the Journal of Aging Studies, am a Member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the Tuke  Institute, a non-profit, international think-tank and policy organization focusing on health policy improvement, particularly in relation to chronic illness, and am Director of the Keele Centre for Ageing Research (https://www.keele.ac.uk/kcar/).

Teaching

In addition to supervising undergraduate, Masters, and PhD dissertations and theses, I teach the following modules:

  • SOC 30038 Medical Sociology
  • SOC 20044 Human Health and Society 
  • SOC 00001 Lifecourse and Society
  • SOC 10015 Self and Society

 

Publications

School of Social Sciences
Chancellor's Building CBA1.039
Keele University
Staffordshire, ST5 5BG
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734346

Undergraduate and postgraduate enquiries
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734346
Email: spgs.office@keele.ac.uk