We were ready to leave our mid-Surrey provincial town partly because we needed more space, what with my 90-year old father encamped in our living room, and partly because of the predictable, grating noise from the Queens’s Head opposite. We could pool our resources and find somewhere larger and quieter. But ending up in Mickleham… Read More »
Some blogs should be expressions of indignation, and this one certainly is. Not that being angry/passionate can be allowed to obstruct evidence-based argument. Towards the tail end of 2011 Wendy Savage and I responded to medical students moving on from campaigns against the threefold hike in student fees and the abolition of the EMS to… Read More »
On twitter a few months back I ventured a list of ‘top ten’ living sociologists. What I meant of course was my favourites, meaning those who had most impressed or influenced me during my intellectual travels. Without revisiting that list I am in this blog offering for consideration a top twelve that, I guess, bears… Read More »
This blog builds on my previous precis of basic critical realism to offer an illustration of its potential for coming to terms with ‘interdisciplinarity’. The focus is on epilepsy-related quality of life, and my analysis draws on work conducted with Caroline Selai and Panagiota Afentouli and published as a chapter in a volume edited by… Read More »
I recently convened an afternoon workshop on ‘interdisciplinarity and health’ as part of UCL’s Behaviour Change Month. I spoke briefly about philosophy, Henry Potts about methods and Caroline Selai about applications. The ensuing discussion was lively and there will I am sure be follow-up gatherings. In this blog, the first of two, I summarize what… Read More »
I first started teaching medical students in 1975, having just taken up a part-time lecturing post at Charing Cross HMS. Much has changed in London over the period since, not least the mergers of most HMSs into four large multi-faculty institutions (leaving St George’s HMS as an outlier). Sociology teaching has changed too. In this… Read More »
I suspect I am not alone in having more ideas than I am able to follow up or write about. And I have arguably been part of a lucky baby-boomer cohort with more negotiating space than young academics have now. Anyway, too many seeds are planted, watered for a while, encouraged to grow and then… Read More »
Over a decade ago, in a calculated bid to rile and provoke engagement with other sociologists, I formulated the ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’ (GBH). This asserted that health inequalities in Britain were first and foremost an unintended consequence of the ‘strategic’ behaviours at the core of the country’s capitalist-executive and power elite. It is a hypothesis… Read More »
Open Letter Dear George Eustice, Re – Invitation on behalf of the ‘Conservative Disability Group’ Executive Committee to attend the Third Annual Disability Colloquium to be addressed by Esther McVey, Minister for Disabled People Thank you very much for this invitation. On reflection I have decided that the most effective way I can serve the… Read More »
This is a first blog written on my own account, so it’s offered with a degree of diffidence. At least the focus, on stigma, is familiar to me. The object is to reflect on ways in which the concept has salience for our grasp of mental illness. It is written in the wake of Ed… Read More »