pathway: Sociology Alumni

My Ph.D. is an original interpretation and qualified defence of Hans Jonas’ ethical, metaphysical, and political philosophy. Firstly, I argue that the purpose of his theoretical system is tackling three ills of modernity: nihilism, the ecological crisis, and the threat to human dignity posed by certain biotechnologies. Secondly, I argue that his means of doing so is the rehabilitation of key aspects of Aristotle’s thought. The end result is a framework of norms and political institutions for governance in light of the above concerns.

My research focuses on the changing nature of retail food co-ops in the UK, their political practices, social dynamics and visions of a better food system.

Food is a productive lens through which to view the political and economic processes which have formed the contemporary food system, informed common-sense thinking about it, and impacted the lives and social worlds of the inhabitants of contemporary Britain. It can be used to enact visions of a more caring/moral political and economic system through the practices and structures of alternative initiatives such as co-ops. By analysing these visions my research explores contemporary British perceptions of concepts such as morality, citizenship and welfare.

I am studying bisexuality/nonmonosexuality. Bisexual and queer studies suggest that nonmonosexual orientations experience monosexism and biphobia which alienates them from both heterosexual and homosexual spaces, leaving them with no communities to share experiences. My research proposes to interview bisexuals/nonmonosexuals in order to assess how they experience biphobia and monosexism in heterosexual and homosexual spaces. This will inform guidelines which I will put in place in an LGBT organisation with later interviews to assess the efficacy of this intervention.

In England, the loss of a pregnancy in the Second Trimester, after 13 weeks’ gestation but before legally defined foetal viability at 24 weeks, often entails a process of labour, birth, and the possibility of an encounter with a recognizably formed foetal body. The ambiguity of this ending of a pregnancy, which is medically and legally defined as a miscarriage, but which some women experience as a stillbirth or neonatal death, places women in a liminal area in which this life event is not socially acknowledged. In this context, some women may make powerful claims to motherhood and the personhood of the foetus/baby that died. Others may wish for acknowledgement of loss which does not depend on defining themselves as mothers, or their foetuses as babies. My PhD is investigating women’s experiences of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in the South West of England using qualitative interviewing and ethnographic fieldwork. It draws on both reproductive sociology and anthropology to try to understand the interaction between personal experience and legal, medical, and other social discourse in this type of pregnancy loss.

My research focuses on the online ‘transabled’ community. Often described as suffering from ‘body integrity identity disorder’ (or BIID), the individuals who make up this community share the collective desire to amputate a healthy limb, feeling that it does not belong to them. Informed by posthumanist, ANT and STS perspectives, I am investigating the ways in which being part of an intersubjective community shapes the narratives that surround this phenomena and how the experience of digitally mediated sociality informs notions of the body as hybrid and (re)makeable.