Dr Vicky Singleton

PhD Supervision Interests

I welcome research students and have supervised 15 students researching in a range of substantive areas including; Caesarean section and women's right to choose, Surgical construction and treatment of obesity, Schizophrenia and psychiatric care, Young women, sexuality and Christian traditions, The co-evolution of children's bodies and prosthetic limbs. I am interested in and have expertise in qualitative research including participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis in the form of detailed case studies. In particular I am interested in research that seeks to articulate and to appreciate the work of practice of programmes, policies, interventions, systems and guidelines.

Research Interests

Key Words

Materiality, practices, technoscience, feminist theory, health, medicine, care,farming, policy, gender constitution and enactment, standardization and generalisation, science and technology studies, (after) actor-network theory.

I trained and worked as a general nurse before studying for a degree in Psychology and completing my PhD in Science and Technology Studies and Feminist Technoscience Studies. I have carried out many empirical case studies in health and medicine and I have recently completed a project about family farm practices and health. I have three children and we live in rural North West of the UK.

My Research Story As a nurse, firstly on an Intensive Care Unit for high dependency patients and later on an acute health care ward for women undergoing surgery, I became interested inthecomplexity ofrelationships between expertise and lay knowledge. I was also fascinated by the craft knowledge embedded in professional practices, in the complex interactions of psychological health and physical health and especially in policy and practice interactions. I studied for a first degree in Psychology and subsequently a PhD within the Centre for Science Studies and Science Policy at Lancaster working with Mike Michael and Brian Wynne on aspects of Public Understanding of Science in health and medicine. I explored the interactions of sciences and publics through an ethnographic case study of the UK Cervical Screening Programme. Subsequent research has included various case studies articulating practices and materialities involved in 'the doing of' health policies. Recently I have completed a project on the relationships between family farm practices and National agricultural policies.

I am a member of the thriving and very active interdisciplinary Centre for Science Studies that intersects with the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies in energising and inspiring ways. I have also learned much through supervisingtwelve PhD students to successful completion of their theses and through teaching, in recent years, the Science and Technology Studies MA core module, 'Science and Technology Studies' and the Women's Studies MA core module, 'Doing Feminist Research'.

Research Programme and Activities My research has addressed questions such as: How is policy practiced? What is expertise? How to live responsibly with 'policy'? My work aims to contribute toScience and Technology Studies and Feminist Studies of Science and Technology, especially in relation to health.

My contribution to Science, Technology Studies is through empirical case studies that aim to articulate practices and materialities. In particular I have contributed to the development of Science, Technology and Medicine Studies and to Feminist Studies of Science and Technology. I draw upon a diverse body of work that includes, public understanding of science and technology, medical sociology, feminist technoscience, theory and practice, cultural studies, science and technology studies and more recently, research on women and farming, food and agriculture. I have completed case studies on, for example,the UK Cervical Screening Programme, an initiative to train members of a rural community in Cardio-pulmonary Resuscitation and, with Professor John Law, on the complexity ofclinical decision making around Alcoholic Liver Disease.

Theory, Method and Implications My research explores three main theoretical concerns. Firstly, I continue to develop conceptual tools that afford articulation of practices and materiality and analytical sensitivity to ambivalence, tacit and craft knowledges. Secondly, I am concerned to explore the processes through which knowledges/programmes/practices are perpetually changing through practice, and the implications of this for policy development. Thirdly, I am keen to explore what it means to practice health policy 'responsibly'.

Some recentpublications:

Contexts of Accountability in Cattle Farming submitted to Science, Technology and Human Values currently under review

Good Farming: Control or Care? in Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes and Farms, Mol, A., Moser, I., and Pols, J. (eds.) Transcript press: Bielefeld (2010)

Choice and birth method: Mixed-method study of caesarean delivery for maternal request. BJOG International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology: 116 (2009) 886-895. (with Carol Kingdon, Tina Lavender, Gill Gyte, M. Gabbay and James Neilson)

A Further Species of Trouble? Disaster, 229-242 in M. Doering and B. Nerlich Eds., From Mayhem to Meaning: The Cultural Meaning of the 2001 Outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease in the UK, Manchester University Press: Manchester, UK (2009) (with John Law)

Training and Resuscitating Healthy Citizens in the English New Public Health inTechnoscience: The politics of interventions, K. Asdal, B. Brenna and I. Moser Eds., Unipub: Oslo, Norway (2007) 221-246.

The promise of public health: Vulnerable policy and lazy citizens, Environment and Planning : Society and Space, Vol 23 (5) (October 2005), 771-786

Object Lessons, Organization Vol. 12 No 3 (2005) 331-355. (with John Law)

Who's choosing caesarean section? British Journal of Midwifery Vol. 11 No. 6 (June 2003) (with Carol Kingdon, Tina Lavender, Gill Gyte, Ruth Cattrell, James Neilson)

Allegory and Its Others in Knowing in Organisations, A Practice Based Approach,Silivia Gherardi, Davide Nicolini and Dvora Yanow (Eds) New York : M.E. Sharpe (2003) 225-254. (with John Law)

Current Teaching

GWS101 - Convenor and lecturer, undergraduate one year course in gender and women's studies. FASS530 - Convenor, Undertaking and completing doctoral research in Gender and Women's Studies.

• Family Farming Practices

  01/01/2007 → 01/01/2010
  Vicky Singleton
  Considering the relationships between national policy and local practices on family farms in NW UK. ... Read more»

• Materialities of Animals and Farming

  01/01/2006 →
  Vicky Singleton
  Farming is a practical activity, messy and material. It involves interactions between people, technologies, animals, and natural forces. I'm working on the heterogeneities of those interactions; how a ... Read more»