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Professor Merran Toerien

Biography

  • PhD (York)
  • BA(Hons) (Psychology, KwaZulu-Natal)

Having grown up in South Africa, Merran Toerien completed her BA(Hons) in Psychology and Gender Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg. She was awarded the Emma Smith Overseas Scholarship to pursue her PhD studies in the UK. Additional funding was also provided by the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust.

Merran began her PhD at Loughborough University and completed it at the University of York. Titled, Hair Removal and the Construction of Gender: A Multi-method Approach, the PhD was supervised by Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson. The thesis consists of a series of projects, including a study of interaction in the beauty salon using conversation analysis (CA). At York, Merran trained extensively in CA and this is now her methodology of choice.

On completing the PhD, Merran worked as a researcher in the Department of Social Medicine at the University of Bristol, focusing on health professional-patient interaction in recruitment to trials and neurology clinic appointments.

She then returned to York to work with Paul Drew, Roy Sainsbury and Annie Irvine on a two-year Department for Work and Pensions-funded project. This examined meetings between claimants of social security benefits and Personal Advisers (PAs) in Jobcentre Plus. During the course of this project, Merran was awarded an RCUK Research Fellowship at York in “Communication and Language Use in Interaction”. This allowed her to focus on developing her research portfolio for a period of five years, after which she transferred to a lectureship in Sociology (also at York).

Since then, her research has focused on understanding how doctors and patients make choices together in UK neurology clinics.  This has been collaborative work with, among others, Markus Reuber (University of Sheffield) and Clare Jackson (University of York), bringing together neurologists, social scientists, medical educators and an elearning specialist.  She is active in medical education and training researchers in the methods of conversation analysis (CA), around the UK and internationally (including in Brazil, China, the Netherlands, and South Africa).  Her collaborative research has led to two 4* impact case studies (REF 2014, 2021). 
Merran is Director of Research in Sociology and Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Language & Communication.  
She is also a member of the University of York's Research Committee.
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Contact details

Professor Merran Toerien
Department of Sociology LMB/228
University of York
YO10 5GD

Tel: +44 (0)1904 32 3061