Dr Mette Kragh-Furbo
Research Fellow

Profile

Biography

Mette works at the intersections of Science and Technology Studies, and the sociology of disease, health and illness. She is interested in the relationship between science and medicine, including how biomedical knowledge gets translated into healthcare practice, and what this means for people’s everyday lives. Her work explores how people make sense of their bodies drawing on a variety of different knowledges, and how they live with chronic illness, focusing on the social, practical and emotional burdens that accompany life with a chronic illness.

In her PhD research, she explored the social life of genetic data, focusing on the biomedicalization processes at work when saliva moves across DNA-spotted microarrays and into online platforms and digital cultures as genetic data where diverse forms of action and knowledges come into play. As a post-doc, she has been involved in several different research projects, including research on the governance of energy demand (DEMAND), patients’ experiences of undergoing radiotherapy treatment for gynaecological cancer (Gynae Narratives Project), the Deathbed Etiquette Project, and research on local authorities and the health impacts of climate change.  

Her current project, funded by the ESRC (New Investigator Award), focuses on the biosocial complexities of the B-vitamin folate and folic acid, exploring why the folate controversy persists. By mapping and analysing the different understandings of folate and positions within the debate, the aim of the project is to generate new knowledge about the connections between why, how and what we ingest and what these compounds do in our bodies with the aim to extend public debate and social theorising on understandings and experiences of health and disease.