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Joanna Latimer
Emerita Professor

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Profile

Biography

Full bio here

Joanna Latimer is an emerita professor of Sociology and former Director of the Science & Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at the University of York. Currently serving as Visiting Professor at University College Cork’s Dementia Lifeworlds program and as Chair of London Arts and Health, funded by Arts Council England, which supports artists, creative practitioners, and health professionals across the whole of London and beyond, promoting excellence and engagement in the field of Creative Health, and extending the reach of the arts to communities and individuals who would otherwise be excluded. 

  • 13 books and special issues, 55+ peer-reviewed articles, 13 book chapters
  • Key themes: ageing, dementia, the politics of care, genomics, interspecies entanglement
  • Extensive keynote and seminar presentations worldwide, including UK, US, Australia, Ireland, Northern Europe and Brazil
  • Supervised over 30 doctoral and postdoctoral scholars.
  • Secured major research funding
  • Adept at fostering interdisciplinary collaboration

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Originally trained in English literature, I spent a decade as a practicing nurse before earning my PhD at the University of Edinburgh. My doctoral research, published as The Conduct of Care, was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize. I have since held academic positions at Keele and Cardiff Universities, where I became Professor of Sociology in 2009. Appointed to the University of York as Professor of the Social Study of Science & Technology in 2016 and as Director of SATSU from 2017 until 2020, when I retired from my university roles during the covid-19 pandemic.

I have sat on advisory boards and held visiting professorships at leading institutions worldwide, including the University of Sydney, University of California San Francisco, Utrecht University, and Fiocruz in Brazil, and have contributed extensively to academic publishing, serving on the editorial board of The Sociological Review and as co-editor of Sociology of Health and Illness.

Research

Overview

Professor Joanna Latimer is an internationally recognized sociologist specializing in Science and Technology Studies (STS), gerontology, medical sociology, and more-than-human sociality. 

Funded by major bodies such as the ESRC, The Wellcome Trust and other prestigious bodies Professor Latimer's research is always collaborative, working with different practitioners and connecting diverse disciplines. Drawing an ethnographic approach together with cutting-edge social theory, her work unpacks the worlds people make together and the politics they are entangled in, to make ordinary

processes of inclusion and exclusion visible. Her critique is directed at offering alternatives to those hierarchical relations that underpin social injustices.

Author of many books and papers, including The Gene, The Clinic and The Family, winner of the 2014 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness annual book prize, Professor Latimer's work often integrates artistic and literary influences, drawing on figures such as Philip Larkin, Frida Kahlo, Wallace Stevens, and sculptor Olivia Musgrave.

Currently, her writing focuses on the new sciences of aging, dementia, care, and more-than-human world-making, including biographical and poetic experiments. Through her interdisciplinary approach, she continues to shape contemporary debates on health, society, and human experience.

Publications

Full publications list

Full publication list here

Books and special Issues:

  • Latimer, J. & López Gómez, D. (eds.) (2019). Intimate Entanglements. London: Sage.
  • Milne, R., & Latimer (eds) (2019) Alzheimer’s Disease and the Evolution of a Postgenomic Science, New Genetics and Society. 39(1)
  • Latimer, J. & Thomas, G. (eds.) (2017) The politics of reproduction and parenting cultures – procreation, pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing, Sociology of Health & Illness, 39 (6).
  • Latimer, J. (2013). The Gene, the Clinic & the Family: Diagnosing Dysmorphology, Reviving Medical Dominance. London/New York: Routledge.
  • Latimer, J. & Miele, M. (eds.) (2013) Naturecultures: Science, affect and the nonhuman. Theory, Culture and Society, 30 (7/8):5-31.
  • Latimer, J. & Skeggs, B. (eds.) (2011) The Politics of Imagination (with Bev Skeggs) The Sociological Review. 59 (3).
  • Latimer, J. & Schillmeier, M. (eds.) (2009). Un/knowing Bodies. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Letiche, H. with Latimer, J. (2009) Making Health Care Care  Greenwich CT: IAP.  
  • Phillipson C., Ahmed N. & Latimer, J. (2003) Women in Transition: A Study of the Experiences of Bangladeshi Women Living in Tower Hamlets. Bristol: The Policy Press.
  • Latimer, J. (ed.) (2003). Advanced Qualitative Research for Nursing. Oxford: Blackwell Science.
  • Latimer, J. (2000). The Conduct of Care: Understanding Nursing Practice. Oxford: Blackwell Science.
  • Robinson, J., Avis, M., Latimer, J. and Traynor, M. (1999) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Health Policy and Practice: Competing Interests or Complementary Interpretations?  Edinburgh: Churchill Livingston.
  • Latimer, J. (1997). Patterns of Care. London: South Bank University.

Recent Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

  • Latimer, J. (2025) Autoethnographic Reflections: Olding as Matters of Care. Language, Literature & Interdisciplinary Studies. vol. 6, no. 4, 16 Apr. 2025, pp. 1.37–1.51, https://doi.org/10.71106/MBZC7122.
  • Latimer, J. (2025) Commentary on Rosie Jones McVey “Learning from the Herd?: Intercorporeality and Ethics in Equine-Assisted Learning for UK Youth.” Current Anthropology
  • Hamilton, L.. Ashall, V., Johnson, M. & Latimer, J. (2025). Kinship Health Relationships: Reconfiguring the “Good Death” in Mixed Species Families. Symbolic Interaction, 48(1), 151-174.
  • Ashall, V., Latimer, J. & Friese, C. (2024). Post-human Professionalism: Interspecies Entanglements and Clinical End of Life Care. In C. Douglas & A. Whitehouse (eds.), More-than-human ageing: Animals, robots, and care in later life. Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press.
  • Latimer, J. (2020). Care. In M. Krogh (ed.) Connectedness—an Incomplete Encyclopaedia of the Anthropocene. Strandberg Publishing.
  • Latimer, J. & Milne, R. (2019). Alzheimer’s Disease and the Evolution of a Postgenomic Science. New Genetics and Society, 39(1), 1-12. DOI:10.1080/14636778.2019.1683213
  • Latimer, J. & Hillman, A. (2019). Biomarkers and Brains: Situating Dementia in the Laboratory and the Clinic. New Genetics and Society, 39(1), 80-100. DOI:10.1080/14636778.2019.1683213
  • Hillman, A. & Latimer, J. (2019) Somaticization, the making and unmaking of minded persons and the fabrication of dementia. Social Studies of Science, 49(2): 208-226.
  • Latimer, J. & Friese, C. (2019). Entanglements in Health & Wellbeing: Working with Model Organisms. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 33(1), 120-137. DOI:10.1111/maq.12489
  • Thomas, G., Katz-Rothman, B., Strange, H., and Latimer, J. (2020) Testing Times: the Social Life of Non- Invasive Prenatal Testing. Science, Technology and Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0971721820960262
  • Latimer, J. (2019). Science Under Siege? Being Alongside the Life Sciences of Ageing. The Sociological Review, 67(2), 264-286. DOI:
    10.1177/0038026119829750
  • Latimer, J. & Lopez, D. (2019). Affects, More-Than-Human Intimacies, and the Politics of Relations in Science & Technology. The Sociological Review, 67(2), 247-263. DOI:10.1177/0038026119829760
  • Latimer, J. (2018). Repelling Neoliberal World-Making? Ageing, Dementia, and the Social. The Sociological Review, 66(4), 832-856. DOI:10.1177/0038026118776363
  • Latimer, J. & Munro, R. (2018). Generalizability. In C. Lury et al. (eds.), The International Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods. London: Routledge.
  • Latimer, J. (2018). Afterword: Materialities, Care, ‘Ordinary Affects’, Power, and Politics. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(2): 379-391.
  • Hillman, A. and Latimer, J. (2017) Cultural representations of dementia. PLoS Med 14(3): e1002274.
    https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.10
    02274&type=printable
  • Latimer, J. & Thomas, G. (2017). The Politics of Reproduction and Parenting Cultures. Sociology of Health & Illness, 39(6), 811-815. DOI:10.1111/1467-9566.12567
  • Müeller, R., Hanson, C., Hanson, M., Penkler, M., Samaras, G., Chiapperino, L., Dupre, J., Kenney, M., Kuzawa, C., Latimer, J., Lloyd, S., Lunkes, A., MacDonald, M., Meloni, M., Nerlich,B., Panese, F., Pickersgill, M., Richardson, S., Rüegg J., Schmitz, S., Stelmach, A., and P.-I. Villa (2017) The Biosocial Genome? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Environmental Epigenetics, Health and Society. EMBO Reports: Science & Society.
  • Latimer, J. & Munro, R. (2016). About ‘Aboutness’: Extensionality, Dwelling and the Turn to Language. In H. Letiche et al. (eds.), Demo(s). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
  • Latimer, J. (2015). In/exclusion in the Clinic: Down's Syndrome and the Ethics of Everyday Work. Sociology, 49(5), 937-954. DOI:10.1177/0038038515587636

Online Essays & Reviews:

Joanna 218w

Contact details

Joanna Latimer
Emerita Professor
Department of Sociology
University of York

Tel: 01904 32 4735