Profile

Biography

After graduating in Social Studies from the University of Newcastle in 1982, I spent some time unemployed before getting a Manpower Services Commission (as it then was) funded post as a 'researcher' at Wordsworth's Dove Cottage in the Lake District - the area in which I had spent the first eighteen years of my life.

I next gained employment as a research officer in the Directorate of Housing in Tower Hamlets in the East End of  London. From there I secured a three-year research contract at King’s College School of Medicine and Dentistry, based in Camberwell in South London. I worked at King’s for three years on a sociological study of dentistry, for which I also gained a PhD.

I then had spells of unemployment, some contract research work and part-time tutoring at various London colleges and medical schools until I was appointed to a temporary lecturing post at the University of Surrey in 1989. In 1990 I returned to Newcastle to take up a permanent lectureship at the Polytechnic (as it then was). I joined the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at York in 1993. In October 2006 I transferred to the Department of Sociology at York.

Research

Overview

Sarah Nettleton is a medical sociologist with a broad range of research interests. She has undertaken research into topics such as: health promotion; medically unexplained symptoms; lay people's use of e-health resources; food allergies; the working lives of medical doctors; running; and recovering heroin users. Her particular interests are in the sociology of the body and developing an embodied sociology. 

Supervision

My research interests are broad but I would be particularly keen to supervise PhDs students who employ qualitative methods to study areas within:

• the sociology of health, illness and medicine.
• the sociology of the medical profession
• experiences of illness, food, allergies and running
• sociology of the body and embodiment

Publications

Selected publications

• Nettleton, S., Neale, J. and Pickering, L. (2011)   “I don’t think there’s much of a rational mind in a drug addict when they are in the thick of it”: towards an embodied analysis of recovering heroin users Sociology of Health and Illness 33 (3)
• Nettleton, S. (2010) ‘The Sociology of the Body’ in W. Cockerham (ed) The New Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology Oxford, Blackwell.
• Nettleton, S., Woods, B., Burrows, R. and Kerr, A. (2010) Experiencing Food Allergy and Food Intolerance: An Analysis of Lay Accounts Sociology 44, 2, 289-305
• Neale, J., Nettleton, S. and Pickering, L. (2011) Recovery From Problem Drug Use: What Can We Learn From The Sociologist Erving Goffman?" Drugs: Education, Prevention & Policy
  Neale, J., Nettleton, S. and Pickering, L. (2011) What is the role of harm reduction when drug users say they want abstinence? Commentary International Journal of Drug Policy
• Twigg, J., Wolkowitz, C., Cohen, R. and Nettleton, S. (2011) ‘Conceptualising Body Work in Health and Social Care’ in Sociology of Health and Illness Special Issue -‘Body Work’
  
• Kerr, A., Woods, B., Nettleton, S. and Burrows, R. (2009) Testing for  Food Intolerance: New Markets in the Age of Biocapital  BioSocieties: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Social Studies of Life Sciences
• Nettleton, S., Woods, B., Burrows, R. and Kerr, A. (2009) Food Allergy and Food Intolerance: Towards a Sociological Agenda Health 13 (6): 647 –664
• Nettleton, S. (2009) ‘Commentary: The appearance of new medical cosmologies and the re-appearance of sick and healthy men and women: a comment on the merits of social theorising’ International Journal of Epidemiology 38 (3) 633-636
• Nettleton, S. ‘The Sociology of the Body’ in W. Cockerham (ed) Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology Oxford, Blackwell, 2009 (Second edition)
• Watt, I., Nettleton, S. and Burrows, R. (2008) The views of doctors on their working lives, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 101 1-6
• Potts, L., Dixey, R. and Nettleton, S. (2008) ‘Precautionary Tales: exploring the obstacles to debating the primary prevention of breast cancer.’ Critical Social Policy 28 (2) 115-135

Full publications list

• Nettleton, S., Burrows, R. and Watt, I. (2008) ‘Regulating medical bodies? the 'modernisation' of the NHS and the disembodiment of clinical knowledge’ Sociology of Health and Illness 30, 2.
• Nettleton, S., Burrows, R. and Watt, I. (2008) ‘How do you feel doctor? an analysis of emotional aspects of routine professional medical work’ Social Theory and Health 6, 1, 18-36.
• Nettleton, S. (2006) Sociology of Health and Illness Cambridge, Polity Press. Second Edition
• Nettleton, S. and Hanlon, G. (2006) ‘“Pathways to the Doctor” in the Information Age: The Role of ICTs in Contemporary Lay Referral Systems’ in A. Webster (ed) Innovative Health Technologies: New Perspectives, Challenge and Change, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
• Nettleton, S. (2006) ‘I just want permission to be ill’: Towards a sociology of medically unexplained symptoms Social Science and Medicine 2006 62 (5) 1167-78
• Nettleton, S. and Hardey, M. (2006) ‘Running away with health: the urban marathon and the construction of 'charitable bodies'’ Health 10 441-460
• Nettleton, S. Burrows, R. and O’Malley, L. (2005) ‘The Mundane Realities of the Everyday Lay Use of the Internet for Health and their Consequences for Media Convergence’ Sociology of Health and Illness 27, 7, 972-992.
• Nettleton, S. O’Malley, L. Watt, I. And Duffey, P (2004) ‘Enigmatic illness: narratives of medically unexplained illness’ Social Theory and Health, 2, 1, 47-66.
• Nettleton, S. (2004) ‘The emergence of e-scaped medicine’, Sociology, 38, 4, 661-680.
• Nettleton, S., Burrows, R. and O’Malley, L. (2004) ‘Health E-types’: an analysis of the everyday use of the internet for health’ Information, Communication and Society, 7, 4, 531-553.
• Nettleton, S. O’Malley, L. Watt, I. And Duffey, P (2004) ‘Enigmatic illness: narratives of medically unexplained illness’ Social Theory and Health, 2, 1, 47-66.
• Nettleton, S. and Burrows, R. (2003) ‘E-scaped medicine? Information, reflexivity and health’ Critical Social Policy, 23, 2, 165-186.