nik
Dr Nik Brown

laura
Dr Laura Machin

mcleod
Dr Danae McLeod

andrew
Prof Andrew Webster

 

About the team

Dr Nik Brown (Principal Investigator)
Nik graduated from Liverpool in 1991 with a joint honours degree in Sociology and Art. The following year, the ESRC were kind enough to fund his MA in Contemporary Sociology at the University of Lancaster where he went on to undertake his Ph.D. His thesis was a sociological and anthropological account of new developments in biotechnology and controversies surrounding the possible use of genetically engineered animals in human transplantation.

He joined the Department of Sociology at the University of York in 1999 becoming Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU). He is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and is Chair of the Department's Board of Studies.

Nik's current research interests focus on culturally intriguing developments in the biosciences like cloning, transpecies transplantation, hybrids, chimeras, stem cells, and biobanking. He is interested in the social management of the boundaries between life and death, the human and the animal, the biologically mundane and the exotic, the public and the private. He is particularly interested in the politics, regulation and governance of novel biological developments and reproduction. He has also written extensively on the sociology of hope, expectations and futurity.

He has published widely in journals related to Science and Technology Studies (STS), Sociology of HealApril 21, 2010 in a wide range of research projects funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Commission and other bodies. ngfb1@york.ac.uk

 

Dr Laura Machin (Research Fellow)
Laura’s passion for sociology and work and organisations began early, with a GNVQ Advanced in Business and Finance and an A-Level in Sociology, continuing with a Certificate in Personnel Practice before a stint in retail management.

In 2000, Laura decided to go to the University of Kent at Canterbury to study psychology and in her first year was awarded the prize for outstanding achievement. Laura decided to change to sociology at the end of her first year and took a variety of social policy, sociology and sociology of work and organisation modules. It was during her time at Kent, that she came across the work of Jonathan Gabe, Anne Kerr and Sarah Nettleton which influenced her decision to study sex selection technology for her dissertation, under the supervision of Kate Reed. In 2003, Laura graduated with a B.A. Sociology (2:1).

Laura was fortunate to receive funding from the Medical Research Council to study for an MSc Medical Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her main interests were in the sociology of professions, sociology of health and illness and reproductive technologies, resulting in her dissertation on gamete donation, supervised by Jon Gabe.

In 2004, Laura began a Ph.D. on the social and ethical context of embryo donation at the University of York with Anne Kerr, generously funded by the Wellcome Trust. She transferred to the University of Leeds, after her supervisor was awarded a Chair at the University, and was subsequently joint supervised with Mark Priestley. After reading around Science and Technology Studies, in particular Actor-Network Theory, Social Construction of Technology and Social Worlds Theory, Laura adopted a social constructionist perspective and drew upon the sociology of professions and Thomas Gieryn’s (1983) notion of boundary-work. She produced a social history of embryo donation, spanning from the 1960s to 2007. It incorporated the emergence of embryo donation, to both other couples and to research, and its associated techniques, such as cryopreservation, IVF and stem cell research. After a brief period in Melbourne and Sydney, Laura conducted interviews with counsellors, clinicians, stem cell scientists, patients, support groups, regulators, policy makers, embryologists and nurses. She also collected documentary data. The data was inputted into Nvivo7 and analysed around the core research questions of the thesis: the roles of, and the relationships between, those involved in embryo donation, and the notion of the family. She successfully passed her viva in November 2008.

During this time, Laura presented her work at the BSA Med. Soc. conference in Herriott-Watt University and at Malaspina University, Canada. She also helped to organise two conferences with Anne Kerr at Universities of Leeds and York.

Laura has returned to the University of York as a research fellow in the Science and Technology Studies Unit. Since starting in January 2009, Laura has undertaken tutorials on the Sociology of Health and Illness modules, building upon her teaching experience at the University of Leeds on Assisted Conception, Genetics and Genomics. From Sept 2010, she will be leading an optional module for students at the Hull and York Medical School on the social and ethical issues associated with assisted conception. She has two papers from her thesis under review, one considering the support available for those using assisted conception techniques and the other examining the impact of the introduction of embryo donation for stem cell research to the roles of infertility counsellors and clinical embryologists. She wishes to follow these papers, with an exploration of the role of infertility support groups. She is a member of the Association for Improvements in Maternity Services. lm603@york.ac.uk

 

Dr Danae McLeod (Research Fellow)
Danae graduated in 2003 from the University of Newcastle (Australia) with a Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) degree. In 2004 she was selected to enrol in a postgraduate Honours degree at the University of Newcastle (Australia), where she completed a thesis entitled: ‘Trusting intimately but contingently: The Art of Managing Contemporary Intimate Relationships’. This thesis was graded at 92%, and Danae was recommended to pursue her doctorate.

Danae travelled to the UK in February 2005, initially on a working holiday maker’s visa. She worked for a period of time in Scotland, before coming to The University of York in Oct 2005 to begin her doctorate under the supervision of Professor Roger Burrows. Her thesis, entitled: ‘Home and Away: A Sociological Study of Transnational Intimate Relationships’, was an empirical, qualitative study investigating individual experiences of being ‘globally mobile’. Through systematic analysis of the narratives of young people and couples involved in transnational relationships, she considered the contentions that individualisation processes have negated the ability for young people to maintain committed, lasting and meaningful relationships and had detrimental effects on traditional familial relations. Further, the research considered the potential consequences of global mobilities on notions of home and belonging, identity, and reflexive life planning, considered against a structural framework of theories of, namely, individualisation, mobilities, nationalism, globalisation, risk, belonging, family and the ‘pure relationship’.

Danae joined the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at York in 2009 and is currently working on the ESRC funded project ‘The Political and Moral Economy of Stem Cell Banking from Cord Blood’. She is particularly interested in relevant notions of risk, reflexive life planning, the information age, the globalisation of tissue economies, and the impact on couples and families when making decisions about cord blood. dem500@york.ac.uk

 

Professor Andrew Webster (Co-investigator)
I am originally from Manchester and after completing my secondary education there, spent two years at university on a scholarship to Boston College USA, before finishing my undergraduate study (BA Social Sciences) at South Bank in London. I then completed a Ph.D. at the Department of Sociology under the supervision of Professor Mike Mulkay exploring the relationship between traditional and modern medicine. I worked at what is now Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge before coming to York in 1999 to a Personal Chair in Sociology, bringing my research Unit, SATSU with me to York. I have been Head of Department since April 2005-2009, and am now the Academic Coordiator for the Social Sciences across the University. ajw25@york.ac.uk

Advisory Panel

Last Updated: April 21, 2010 | lm603@york.ac.uk

Back to the Top