Topics I would be interested in supervising include:

science, technology and medicine studies - in particular studies of clinical practice, learning and evidence telecare and domestic space - in particular governance and ethics of new care technologies evidence in action studies - in particular lay ethnographies of technoscience disaster and recovery studies

Research Interests:

Sociology of science, technology and medicine: technological change, telemedicine and telecare, innovation in health science and technology, health policy and politics, disaster and recovery studies. I work largely with ethnographic and participative methodologies.

Current and recent projects include:

• Lost in Translation: Complexity, Risk and Resilience in Animal Disease Strategies - an inter-disciplinary evaluation of the natural and societal effectiveness of containment strategies for animal diseases (ESRC/NERC Rural Economy & Land Use Programme RELU). http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/cswm/LiT/po.php
• EFORTT: Ethical Frameworks for Telecare Technologies for Older People at Home, (EC FP7 Science in Society) Co-ordinator of collaborative research project http://www.lancs.ac.uk/efortt/index.html
• Flood, vulnerability and resilience: a real-time study of local recovery following the floods of June 2007 in Hull (Environment Agency/ESRC) http://www.lec.lancs.ac.uk/cswm/Hull%20Floods%20Project/HFP_home.php
• The Health & Social Consequences of the 2001 UK Foot & Mouth Disease Epidemic (Department of Health)
• Understanding Expertise in Anaesthesia (NHS R&D Fund)
• The Social Construction of Evaluation in Telemedicine and Telehealthcare (Department of Health)
• Telemedicine, Telehealthcare & the Future Patient (ESRC/MRC Innovative Health Technologies Programme)

Former director of the Centre for Science Studies http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/css; contractor for the EC FP5 Thematic Network, 'Identifying Trends in European Medical Space' (ITEMS) and the FP6 Specific Support Action, Governance, Health & Medicine: opening dialogue between social scientists and users (MEDUSE), see: http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/WebCSI/ITEMS/index.php

Development of a 'living' archive of the 2001 FMD epidemic, Cumbria County Council community project see: http://www.footandmouthstudy.org.uk/

Health & Social Consequences of the 2001 FMD epidemic dataset acquired and archived by the ESRC Economic & Social Data Service (Qualidata) as a 'classic study' http://www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata/introduction.asp

This year I am teaching Disasters: why do things go wrong? Part II Sociology. I also teach on the Health, Life & Bodies course with Celia Roberts in which we have pioneered problem based learning methods in Sociology. I contribute to the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences Qualitative Methods (Ethnography in Practice) and Analysing Qualitative Data research training courses.

I am a Problem Based Learning tutor on the Lancaster based medical degree and Director of Special Study Modules for Lancaster and Liverpool medical students.

I am currently supervising five doctoral students in the areas of technological change, expertise, patient safety and situated learning, living with severe mental illness and disaster survival and recovery.

A former journalist and health correspondent on local/regional newspapers, I came to Lancaster 13 years ago from Leeds University where my first post-doctoral research job was in health policy and politics.