Overview

Global Health and Social Medicine welcomes applications to join our lively and mutually-supportive community of doctoral students. Working on and across our key research themes, the growing community is co-located in our research lab with visiting researchers, research fellows and professors. Students benefit from our active participation in the London Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre (LISS-DTP), which provides training and leadership in relevant cross-cutting themes. Within Global Health and Social Medicine, we also offer a thriving programme of workshops, reading groups and other events.

Recently released data from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) shows that King’s is equal top in England (with Queen Mary, University of London) for its PhD completion rates with 86.8 per cent of its full time research degree starters qualifying with a research degree within seven years, against a national average in England of 72.9 per cent.

 Course Detail

Research in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine (established January 2012) focuses on the social, political, economic, legal and ethical factors shaping developments in biomedicine, disease and healthcare and their implications.

We have research priorities in the following areas:

• Social determinants of national and global inequalities in health, including from life-course and international comparative perspectives;
• Philosophical and ethical aspects of global health pertaining to theories of social justice;
• Social, ethical and political implications of developments in psychiatry, neuroscience and brain research, and the changing territory of mental health;
• Political economy, sociology and history of pharmaceutical regulation, innovation and pharmaceuticalization, especially drug safety and efficacy;
• Social study of reproductive technologies;
• Social, ethical, and regulatory aspects of personalised and data-driven medicine, of bio-information use in forensics and policing, and of innovation and translation in genomics, stem cells and neuroscience;
• The ethical and social implications of conducting research with human participants, and of making treatment decisions at the end of life
• Social, economic and policy consequences of ageing populations in developed and developing worlds;
• Family care and support in later life, with a particular focus on international comparative work;
• Life course influences on health and wellbeing at older ages, including life-long disorders;
• Social and ethical consequences of the capitalisation of healthcare and the roles of solidarity, justice and priority-setting in biomedicine and healthcare;
• Social and ethical implications of emerging biotechnologies, bio-politics and the global bio-economy;
• Medical anthropology and science and technology studies pertaining to knowledge, expertise, morality, safety and security;
• Medical anthropology, history, and public health of Sub-Saharan Africa;
• Socio-political and cultural dimensions of global health research, policy and innovation in developing countries, including disease control interventions such as outbreak response and preparedness;
• Social and political history of biosciences in the global south.

Information is current, but staff members can change.

Head of group/division

Dr Lucy van de Wiel (Postgraduate Research Director)

Kay Hopkin (School PGR Programmes and ECR Support Manager)