Personal Chair: Steven Waite Sturdy

Steven Waite Sturdy has been made Personal Chair of the Sociology of Medical Knowledge.

He studied natural sciences at the University of Cambridge, then philosophy of science at the University of Western Ontario, before finding his intellectual home while undertaking a PhD at Edinburgh’s Science Studies Unit.

His doctoral research, on the life and work of physiologist JS Haldane, led to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at the University of Manchester.

Professor Sturdy returned to Edinburgh and the Science Studies Unit with a Wellcome Trust University Award in the History of Medicine.

From 2006 to 2012 he was Deputy Director of the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum, where he helped to develop innovative approaches to knowledge exchange around the social dimensions of the new biological sciences.

His research interests focus on the historical sociology of major changes in medical knowledge, practice and policy, from the growth of laboratory medicine to the current ferment of activity around genomic medicine.

He is currently head of the Science, Technology and Innovation Studies subject group within the School of Social and Political Science, and holds a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities.