Focusing on clinical trials in Sri Lanka, Salla Sariola’s seminar will explore the tangled relationship between biomedical research, regulation and development in Sri Lanka. Her analysis points to localised contestations around the shape and kind of research cultures as well as the values embedded in different notions of bioethics, leading to individual and institutional conflicts and compartmentalized regulatory structures. Based on an ongoing book, co-authored with Bob Simpson (Durham), the talk examines the crossovers between research as systematic knowledge creation and innovation, and development as the orchestration of various resources to achieve goals in economic growth, improvements in well-being and sustainability. Focusing on three controversies, she explores the conceptual changes ushered in by clinical trials and their bioethical regulation.

Salla Sariola is a Senior Researcher at the Ethox Centre, University of Oxford, and an editor of Science and Technology Studies. Her research interests include social studies of biomedicine and bioethics as well as gender and sexuality.  

This seminar is co-organised by Centre for Global Health Policy, Centre for Bionetworking,  STEPS Centre

For inquiries: h.c.chang@sussex.ac.uk