Joanna Latimer
Emerita Professor

Profile

Biography

Emerita Professor of Sociology, Science & Technology & former Director of the Science & Technology Studies Unit (SATSU), University of York, UK.

Having studied English Literature as an undergraduate, I then trained and worked as a nurse for ten years. As a medical ward sister, I won a fellowship to do a PhD at Edinburgh, which I completed in 1994, published as The Conduct of Care, shortlisted for the BSA Philip Abram’s Memorial Prize. Having worked at Keele University in Nursing and the Centre for Social Gerontology I took up a lectureship in Sociology at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences in 1999, progressing to chair in 2009. I joined Sociology at York in 2016.

My research focuses on the cultural, social and existential effects and affects for how science & medicine are done. I work ethnographically, from the bedside, inside the clinic, across to the laboratory and the home, and back again. Subjects include the new genetics, reproduction, development and ageing. My work examines everyday processes of inclusion and exclusion, and tracks how people, technologies and other non-humans are assembled and made to mean. I am especially interested in the worlds people make together and the biopolitics they are entangled in and circulate.  

Making contributions at the leading edge of social theory, I have written about the constituting of classes, motility, extension, aboutness, naturecultures, care in biomedicine, dwelling, the politics of imagination, body-world relations and class, often incorporating analyses of writers, such as Philip Larkin, and artists, such as F,rida Kahlo and the sculptor Olivia Musgrave. Currently, I am exploring the notion of the Threshold as well as Entanglement.

I have published many articles and books, including The Gene, The Clinic and The Family: Diagnosing Dysmorphology, Reviving Medical Dominance, winner of the 2014 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness annual book prize. My current work investigates the biology of ageing, and how humanist, trans and post-humanist ideas get played out in the making and unmaking of social worlds.

I have held 3 visiting chairs at Sidney University, University of California San Francisco, and the Humanistic University, Utrecht. I was a longstanding member of the editorial board of The Sociological Review, and until recently editor of the journal Sociology of Health and Illness.

I have recently published Intimate Entanglements with Daniel López Gómez and am currently writing a new book for Routledge, Biopolitics and the Limits to Life: Ageing, Biology and Society in the 21st Century, as well as co-editing a special issue for New Genetics and Society on contemporary developments in Alzheimer’s research (with Richard Milne & Shirlene Badger).

Research

Projects

2009-2018 Biology & Society at the Limits of Life

Grants

2019 - Interspecies entanglement in clinical end of life care, with Vanessa Ashall. The Wellcome Trust Small Grants in Humanities and Social Sciences

2016-18 Biology and Ageing.  With Carrie Friese (LSE).  Funded by University of York Department of Sociology. 

2013-2018 - ESRC Early Detection of Dementia.  Wales Integrative PhD Programme in Neurodegeneration (WIN) studentships x 5 studentships (Team: Andrew Lawrence & Kim Graham, Psychology & Neuroscience, Cardiff University). (Co-PI) 

Supervision

Mentoring: Postdoctoral Fellowships

2018-19: Mentor – Gareth Thomas - Counter-Configurations of Disability: A Qualitative Study with Parents of Children with Down’s Syndrome.

The Sociological Review Foundation Start Grants.

2018-21: Mentor – Neil Stephens – Big Tissue & Society. Wellcome Trust Investigator Award.

2017-18: Mentor – Dr Meritxell Ramírez-i-Ollé. The Sociological Review Fellowship. The Sociological Review Foundation.

2010-15: Mentor – Alexandra Hillman Ethics in practice: An ethnographic study of decision-making and their implications in dementia care (Team: Tony Bayer, Medicine and Ruth Chadwick, Cesagen). Wellcome Trust Bioethics Fellowship.

2010-15: Grantholder and Mentor – Dr Rachel Hurdley. Rethinking openness, space and organisations. Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship.

Postgraduate Research Students

I welcome applications from candidates across any of my research interests. I have supervised 23 doctoral students, 13 of whom have been externally funded, including by NIHR as well as the ESRC, and have examined 16 doctorates at home and abroad.

TAP Member/Chair (@York)

• Carol Robinson Dying Inside: deaths from natural causes in prison culture, regimes and relationships (ESRC/White Rose DTP studentship).
• Bethany Robertson Women in farming. (Department teaching scholarship)
• Jill Simpson Relating to Data through Visualisation. (ESRC/White Rose DTP studentship) 

Doctoral Students Supervised until May 2016

• G. Pourgashtasbi (ESRC + 3 type 2 award) Syndrome Identities: An ethnographic study of young people experiencing rare genetic disorders (2015-16 – has returned to Germany).
• L. Harper (ESRC + 3) An ethnographic study of children, young adults and their families’ experiences and perceptions of Leber hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON) (2014-18).
• B. Coad (ESRC WIN +3) Early detection of structural & functional behavioural variant frontal lobe dementia (2013-2017).
• M. Journeaux (Professional Doctorate) ‘Looking back to look forward’ - Enlightenment and Empowerment: Exploring how nurses have made sense of their educational experience (2013-2018).
• E. Whitfied (ESRC +3 type 2 award) Reflexivity and the third age (2013-2016).
• S. Flatt. (Part-time) Delivering Spiritual Care in the Acute Setting: A multi-disciplinary responsibility? (2012-2017).

Doctoral Completions

• J. Latchem (ESRC +3) Shaping, sharing and negotiating futures in brain injury rehabilitation (2013-2016).
• T. Banks. (PhD Full-time/Self-funding) What is the relationship between Identity and Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) with particular reference to rehabilitation? 2011-2016.
• S. Davies. (ESRC open competition 1+3 award) An ethnographic study of anti-ageing science (2010-2016).
• H. Strange (Welsh Government’s National Institute for Social Care and Health Doctoral Research Studentship) Women’s situated reasoning on emerging non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) technologies. 2011-2015
• D. Clarke. (Part-time PhD) Experience of gay men undertaking undergraduate nursing courses, 2014.
• G. Thomas. (ESRC +3) Down’s Syndrome: Experiences of Stigma in the Family, 2014.
• 7. M. Andrews-Evans. (Professional Doctorate, P/T). High-level Nursing Service Performance Indicators for Assessment of the Quality of the Nursing Service in a NHS Organisation? 2012.
• H. Burgon (ESRC 1+3). An exploratory study of horsemanship as therapeutic intervention for disadvantaged young people, 2011.
• P. White. (+ 3 ESRC Studentship). The significance of a life threatening event: an interpretive ethnographic inquiry with survivors of an Intensive Care Unit, 2008.
• Hillman. (School Bursary 1+ 3). Social exclusion and the contemporary organisation of health care: an ethnography of older people in Accident and Emergency, 2008.
• Mylles. (School Bursary 1+ 3). The Social Construction of Sexual Identity within an Organisational Setting, 2008.
• D. Evans. (ESRC 1+ 3 Studentship). Buying into Bohemia: Shopping for morality, 2006.
• R. Bridgens (ESRC 1+ 3 Studentship). Silenced voices: understanding postpolio syndrome through illness narratives, 2005.
• Dr H. Charles-Jones. (NHSE New Blood Fellowship) Primary health care team manager, family doctor or general physician? An ethnography of the role of the general practitioner under change agendas, 2003.
• E. Barradell (School of Post-Graduate Medicine, Keele University)Participation of families and older people in the social organisation of the nursing home, 2001
• N. Brocklehurst (NHSE New Blood Fellow).Evaluation of clinical supervision in community care nursing, 1999.

MPhil Completions

• S. Clifton. (MPhil, P/T) Independence & Interdependence in Palliative Cancer Care, 2014.
• P. Day. (MPhil, P/T) Community psychiatric nursing: knowledge and theories in use, Keele University, 2000.
• Dr J. Wright. (MPhil, P/T) Diabetic patients in general practice: their understandings of the long-term affects of diabetes and their experiences of how diabetes is managed, 1999.

PhD Examining

• Ruchi Higham. Clinical trials in regenerative medicine: negotiating process, practice and outcomes, University of York, 2017.
• Kevin Pijpers. Haptic Encounters with Archaeological Knowing. Bodily Practices in Excavation, University of Leicester, 2017.
• S. Wright. Contextualising patient-centred professionalism in Gastroenterological practice: Consulting with patients, professionals and stakeholders about Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Swansea University, 2015.
• J. Swallow. Cognitive Screening Tools for Alzheimer’s Disease, Leeds University, 2016.
• D. Keating An ethnographic study of men's health in an urban community. Dublin City University, 2015 (Awarded MPhil).
• F. O’Reilly.  Reality or rhetoric? Community involvement in primary care in north inner city Dublin, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, 2012.
• A. Ehrenstein. Precarity And The Crisis Of Social Care: Everyday Politics And Experiences Of Work In Women’s Voluntary Organisations, Cardiff University School of Social Science, 2012.
• E. Bendien. From the art of remembering to the craft of ageing. A study of the Reminiscence Museum, Humanitas, Rotterdam, Humanistik University, Utrecht, 2010.
• P. Stronge. Open to suggestion: Ordering, risk and invention in community mental health work, Goldsmiths College, London, 2009.
• M. Attard.  Carriers of Responsibility, University of Sydney. 2009
• S. Schofield. An exploration of how delirium in older people is explained and understood by qualified nurses, Glasgow Caledonian University. 2008.
• A. Elderfield. Connecting people, Cardiff University, 2008.
• C. Palli. Entangled Laboratories: Liminal Practices In Science, Universtat Autonoma, Barcelona, Spain, 2004
• M. Heartfield. Governing recovery: a study of hospital length of stay and the reconstitution of patients and beds, Melbourne University, Australia, 2002.
• M. Duke.  Constructions of the role of the nurse in hospital in the home (HITH) programs in Victoria, La Trobe University, Australia, 2002.
• S. Brajtman. Relatives experience of delirium terminal patients before death, De Montford University, 2001.
• T. Rudge, Nursing Wounds: A Discourse Analysis of Nurse-Patient Interactions During Wound Care Procedures in a Burns Unit, La Trobe University, Australia, 1997.

Publications

Selected publications

Books

Latimer, J. & López Gómez, D. (eds.) (2019) Intimate Entanglements.The Sociological Monograph Series. London: Sage.

Latimer, J. (2013) The Gene, the clinic and the family: diagnosing dysmorphology, reviving medical dominance. London/New York, Routledge. Winner 2014 FSHI/BSA Book Prize.

Latimer, J. & Schillmeier, M. (eds.) (2009) Un/knowing Bodies The Sociological Review Monograph Series/Special Issue. 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. Shortlisted for BSA Phillip Abrams Memorial Prize.

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.

Special Issues in Leading Journals

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. & 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).

Recent Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

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. & Hillman, A. (2019) Biomarkers and brains: situating dementia in the laboratory and in the memory clinic. New Genetics and Society. 39:1, 80-100

Milne, R., & Latimer, J. (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

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. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312719834069

Latimer, J. (2019) Science Under Siege? being alongside the life sciences of ageing, giving science life. The Sociological Review. 67(2): 264-286.

Latimer, J. and López Gómez , D. (2019) Affects, more-than-human intimacies and the politics of relations in Science and Technology. The Sociological Review. 67 (2): 247-263.

Strathern, M. and Latimer, J. (2019) In Conversation. The Sociological Review. 67 (2): 481-496.

Friese, C. & Latimer, J. (2019) Entanglements in health and wellbeing: working with model organisms in biomedicine and bioscience. Medical Anthropology Quarterly. 33(1): 120-137. DOI: 10.1111/maq.12489. Open Access

Latimer, J. (2018) Repelling Neoliberal World-making? How the Ageing-Dementia Relation is Reassembling the Social. The Sociological Review, 66(4):832-856.

Latimer, J. (2018). Afterword: Materialities, Care, ‘Ordinary Affects’, Power, and Politics. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(2): 379-391.

Latimer, J. (2017) Review of Donna Haraway’s Manifestly Haraway. The Cyborg Manifesto. The Companion Species Manifesto. Companions in Conversation (with Cary Wolfe). Posthumanities 37. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Theory, Culture & Society. 34 (7-8):245-252.

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.1002274&type=printable

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. http://embor.embopress.org/content/early/2017/09/20/embr.201744953

Latimer, J. & Thomas, G. (2017) Editorial: The politics of reproduction and parenting cultures – procreation, pregnancy, childbirth and childrearing. Sociology of Health & Illness, 39 (6): 811–815.

Latimer, J. & Thomas, G. (2015). In/exclusion in the clinic: Down's syndrome, dysmorphology, and the ethics of everyday work in the clinic. Special Issue: Sociologies of Everyday Life. Sociology, 49(5): 937-954.

Latimer J. & Munro R. (2015) Unfolding Class? Culture, modernity and uprooting.  Special Issue: The Great British Class Survey.  The Sociological Review.  63: 415-432. 

Latimer J. (2014) Nursing, the politics of organization and the meanings of care. Journal of Research in Nursing 19 (7-8) 537-545). doi: 10.1177/1744987114562151

Latimer J. (2013) Being alongside: Rethinking relations amongst different kinds. Theory, Culture and Society, 30: 77-104 & Online First

Latimer J. & Miele M. (2013) Naturecultures? Science, Affect and the Non-human. Theory, Culture and Society, 30: 33-50 & Online First

Latimer J. (2013) Rewriting bodies, portraiting persons? The gene, the clinic and the (post)human. Body & Society: 19: 3-31

Recent Book Chapters

Latimer J. (2020) Care. In Marianne Krogh (ed.) Connectedness – an Incomplete Encyclopaedia of the Anthropocene. Strandberg Publishing.

Latimer J. & Munro R. (2018) Generalizability. In: The International Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, edited by Celia Lury et al. London: Routledge.

Latimer J. & Munro R. (2016) About ‘Aboutness’: Extensionality, Dwelling and the Turn to Language In: Letiche H. G. Lightfoot and J.-L. Moriceau (eds.) Demo(s), Pp71-84. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Cox, L; Mason P., Bagley M., Steinsaltz D., Stefanovska A., Bernjak A., McClintock P., Phillips A., Upton J., Latimer J. and Davies T. (2^nd Author) (2014) Understanding Ageing: Biological & Social Constructions. In: Alan Walker (ed.) The New Sciences of Ageing. Bristol: Polity Press. Pp.25-76

Latimer J. and Puig de la Bellacasa M. (2013) Re-Thinking the Ethical: Everyday Shifts of Care in Biogerontology. In:  Priaulx N. & Wrigley A. (eds.) Ethics, Law and Society. Vol. V. (i) Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Pp. 153-174.

Online Reviews & Blogs

Latimer, J. (2018) Living with Trees: Naturecultures, time and molecular intimacies. https://entanglingyork.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/living-with-trees-joanna-latimer/

Latimer, J. (2017) Becoming-Rendered: On being caught in-between thresholds. Threshold. https://thresholdyork.wordpress.com/2017/09/20/becoming-rendered-on-being-caught-in-between-thresholds/

Latimer, J. (2017) Slowing things down? The problem of people becoming (in)formed in a world of triggers rather than thresholds. Threshold. https://thresholdyork.wordpress.com/2017/07/17/slowing-things-down-the-problem-of-people-becoming-informed-in-a-world-of-triggers-rather-than-thresholds/

Latimer J. & Munro, R. (2017) The Politics of the Threshold: Power, motility, and endless ‘passing’. Thresholds.  https://thresholdyork.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/the-politics-of-the-threshold-power-motility-and-endless-passing/    

Latimer J. (2016) Review of Donna Haraway. Manifestly Haraway. The Cyborg Manifesto. The Companion Species Manifesto. Companions in Conversation (with Cary Wolfe). Posthumanities 37. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  2016. Theory, Culture & Society, Online Review, 16th September, http://www.theoryculturesociety.org/review-joanna-latimer-manifestly-haraway/

Latimer J. (2014) Joanna Latimer on Wolfe, Barad & Posthuman Ethics, response to Florence Chiew’s TCS article ‘Posthuman Ethics with Cary Wolfe and Karen Barad: Animal Compassion as Trans-Species Entanglement’ Theory, Culture & Society, http://www.theoryculturesociety.org/joanna-latimer-on-wolfe-barad-and-posthuman-ethics/

Further publications