Postgraduate

CBSS staff supervise a range of postgraduate research students – including PhDs and Masters of Research (MScR) students. We support students across a range of disciplines and topics within bioethical, legal, and social aspects of medicine. Our interdisciplinary PhD student supervision has covered, but is not limited to:

• Interdisciplinary explorations of issues in HIV, sexual and reproductive health and sexualities
• Bioethical explorations in global health and reproductive technologies
• Science and technology studies approaches to genetics, MND, chronic health disability

Members of CBSS supervise students through a variety of mechanisms, including via the PhD with Integrated Studies in Medical Sciences with Engagement and the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme for Health Professionals, the Edinburgh Clinical Academic Track (ECAT).

Our staff also contribute to postgraduate taught courses and supervision, including supervision of student-led qualitative dissertations within the MPH programme. Example dissertation topics have included:

• Trans and non-binary experiences of cervical screening in Scotland
• Older people’s experiences of mHealth technologies
• How discloser of PrEP status on gay sociosexual media platforms affects safer sex negotiations and practices of gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM).

Jorge Crespo Suarez 

Jorge’s PhD research examines how psychologists participate in, contribute to, or resist the intensification of psychiatric medicalisation into primary care in Chile. The project analyses medicalisation processes in care settings, with a particular focus on mental healthcare practitioners’ engagement in these processes and potential social implications. 

Jarmo De Vries 

Jarmo’s PhD research explores the NHS Genomic Medicine Service and the transformation of existing genetic testing services. The project focuses on how the organisation and infrastructure of the GMS is constructed and how this enables the production and interpretation of genomic data and creates a new governance regime for genomic testing. 

Esther Gonzalez Hernando

Esther's PhD research explores policy discourses of data-driven technologies and participatory governance approaches in public health and healthcare settings. The project applies Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim’s concept of sociotechnical imaginaries to understand how health technologies are conceived and implemented in global, national, and local policy settings.   

Hadewych Honne 

Hadewych’s PhD research explores the roles of rare disease patient organisations in promoting the accessibility and availability of orphan medicines. The project focuses on rationales for organising pharmaceutical innovation. Attending to competing interests across healthcare systems and pharmaceutical companies, Hadewych questions how patient organisations position themselves in the struggle to provide orphan medicines. 

Giorgia Kerr 

Giorgia’s PhD research explores the development of novel treatments for Huntington’s disease. The project focuses on the multiple dimensions of value and value creation in Huntington’s disease research. Specifically, Giorgia analyses how individuals, families, patient organisations, and researchers create and experience value, and what happens when different values come into contact.

Cristina Moreno Lozano 

Cristina’s PhD research explores antibiotic stewardship in the context of university teaching hospitals in democratic Spain (1970s-present). This project focuses on how materials, infrastructures and labour are coordinated to implement antibiotic interventions in the hospital; how ‘resistant’ microbes emerge as knowledgeable and governable in and through antibiotic interventions; and how health professionals embody the role of stewardship team members and bring forward the notion of ‘optimization’ in clinical medicine.   

Emma Nance 

Emma's PhD research examines the bioethical implications of human and non-human biosurveillance. The project is focused on integrating and updating biosurveillance policies under a One Health and global justice framework. 

Carol Porteous 

Carol’s PhD research explores the social implications of patient public involvement (PPI) in research.

Lisa Raeder 

Lisa's PhD research explores experiences and perceptions of contraception among sexual health care practitioners and lay people at a sexual health clinic in Stockholm, Sweden. The project focuses on gender and self-making within hormonal contraceptive methods and practices. Specifically, Lisa analyses how people make sense of and feel about contraceptive recommendations, decisions, and practices. 

Vorathep Sachdev 

Vorathep’s PhD research explores regulations of laboratory biosafety and biosecurity and supervisor-supervisee relationships.

Jamie Webb 

Jamie’s PhD research explores the ethical use of AI in healthcare resource allocation. Specifically, his project synthesises philosophical bioethics, qualitative interviews, and public deliberative processes. 

Programme Co-directors: Ross Fitzgerald and Martyn Pickersgill

The 4-year Wellcome Trust PhD programme in One Health Models of Disease: Science, Ethics and Society combines key training in experimental techniques, bioethics and social sciences, to apply new ‘One Health’ models of neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, developmental, and infectious diseases of humans and animals.  

The bioethical and social scientific component of the PhD is designed to interrelate with and augment the biomedical training in cutting-edge fields like genome editing, helping to produce researchers across disciplines with an enhanced ability to understand and engage in interdisciplinary work. 

In their first year, students take six core modules - including one in bioethics and social science. The taught courses include specific sessions on the social and ethical aspects and implications of animal research, and application of genomic technologies in health. They also take two rotation projects, with the option for one to be in bioethics and social sciences. In the final three years of the programme, students can choose to specialise in bioethics and social sciences entirely 

PhD in One Health Models of Disease programme info