Dr Shelda-Jane Smith PhD

Personal Statement

I received my Ph.D. from The University of Liverpool, Department of Public Health and Policy. My doctoral research was an ethnography of the pediatric clinical and caregiving practices surrounding the transition to adult services for youth with neuro-disabilities and epilepsy and is the focus of my new book Neurodivergent Youthhoods: Adolescent Rites of Passage, Disability and the Teenage Epilepsy Clinic.

I joined the Geography and Planning Department in 2020, working across disciplinary frameworks of medical sociology, environmental humanities, science and technology studies [STS], philosophy of science, and critical health geographies. Broadly speaking, my research considers the relations between human health - both physical and psychological - and our sociocultural and physical environments.

Research interests: science and technology studies; environmental humanities; planetary health; critical perspectives in medicine and psychology; biosociality and biopoltics; climate change; methodological innovation (ethnography, creative and participatory methods) and the politics of narrative; Afro-Caribbean Diaspora (UK and Caribbean).