Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society

Welcome to the CBSS blog

An introduction to our new blog by Sophie Butcher, Communications and Social Media Intern at CBSS

Welcome to the first post of the brand-new blog for the Centre of Biomedicine, Self, and Society. We have started this blog because we are passionate about two things:

1. The research we conduct at the Centre.

Centre for Biomedicine Self and Society team
Our team at CBSS

There is a wide range of fascinating, interdisciplinary research that is currently happening at CBSS across bioethics, biomedicine, as well as medical sociology, anthropology, law, and history. We have seven key themes within the Centre:

  • Beyond Disease
  • Beyond Bodies
  • Beyond Engagement 
  • Beyond the Legal 
  • Beyond the Global
  • Beyond Data
  • Beyond Sex

And each of these themes are working at the cutting edge within their respective fields. They are each centred around key sites for social and technical transformation occurring within biomedicine and society.  Within these themes, we have researchers working on projects on everything from artificial intelligence to zygotes.

Each of the 21 full time researchers and 13 PhD students are working on something unique and interesting that speaks to the changing landscape within medicine and society. We want to showcase this fantastic research as much as we can!

 

2. Making our research accessible to as wide a range of people as possible.

Not only are we passionate about inclusivity on the basis of principle, much of our research is focussed on engaging those outside of the conventional medical or academic bubbles. For example, our Beyond Engagement theme looks critically at what ‘engagement’ actually means and should look like in practice; it considers the importance of how knowledge is produced and how this impacts medical outcomes. Similarly, Beyond the Global is interested in how space and time mediate health and illness – and again, uses critical perspectives to understand it. These are just two examples of how our research centres involvement beyond what would normally be expected.

So, if our research foregrounds engagement, being critical of how knowledge is produced, and the everyday interactions that shape biomedicine, the self, and society then it follows that we should be putting that into practice ourselves.

These short blogs (up to 1200 words long) are designed to condense the academic research occurring at the Centre into a short, readable, and (hopefully) enjoyable format. We are also hoping this blog will help situate the Centre’s work within trending topics, current affairs, and things people care about.

You may not ordinarily have the time to read an entire journal article, book, or thesis on a piece of research from CBSS, but we hope this blog means you will be able to read more about the research that is happening in the Centre.