Research

Since the 1990s, I have managed, as sole PI & director, 8 international ESRC-funded projects and one Wellcome Trust funded project. Also involved in the management of five other international projects, one funded by WWF (Co-I), one by European Commission ('scientist-in-charge'), one by Wellcome Trust (Co-I), one by Canadian Institute for Health Research, and the other by the ESRC (Co-I) on 'pharmaceuticalization of sleep' (Total Research Council FEC-equivalent grant income of approx. £5.0M to date). Together these projects have formed a major empirical research programme in the Sussex Sociology Department on 'Pharmaceuticals and Public Health: Regulation, Innovation and Biomedical Ethics'. The programme spans the interface of sociology of science and technology and medical sociology, with particular emphasis on international comparative research and international research generally. Countries researched in the programme include: UK, US, Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Portugal, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, the supranational EU and Canada

Some ongoing research projects are on 'social and political dynamics of drugs safety withdrawals in the UK and the US, 1971-92' (ESRC); 'regulation of innovative pharmaceuticals in US and supranational EU' (ESRC); 'ethical and public policy implications of transgenics in carcinogenic risk assessment of pharmaceuticals' (Wellcome Trust); and 'UK and US drug safety withdrawals in a changing political context, 1993-2008' (ESRC).

'User groups' include: the US Food and Drug Administration, the US National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine, the European Medicines Evaluation Agency, the medical, pharmacology, social pharmacy, toxicology, epidemiology and public health professions, the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, the pharmaceutical industry, Health Action International, Public Citizen in the US and the UK Consumers' Association. In addition, I publish regularly in the Lancet and British Medical Journal to help to reach user groups.

Latest Publications

Abraham J, Ballinger R (2012) Power, expertise and the limits of representative democracy: genetics as scientific progress or political legitimation in carcinogenic risk assessment of pharmaceuticals? Journal of Community Genetics 3, 91-103.

Davis, C, Abraham J (2012) Unhealthy Pharmaceutical Regulation: Innovation, Politics and Promissory Science. London & New York: Palgrave, 255pp.

Davis C, Abraham J (2011) ‘A comparative analysis of risk management strategies in EU and US pharmaceutical regulation’ Health, Risk & Society, 13, 413-31.

Abraham J (2011) ‘Evolving sociological analyses of “pharmaceuticalization”’ Sociology of Health & Illness 33, 726-28.

Davis C, Abraham J (2011) ‘The socio-political roots of pharmaceutical uncertainty in the evaluation of “innovative” diabetes drugs in the EU and the US’ Social Science & Medicine, 72, 1574-81.

Davis C, Abraham J (2011) ‘Desperately seeking cancer drugs: explaining the emergence and outcomes of accelerated pharmaceutical regulation’ Sociology of Health & Illness, 33, 731-47.

Davis C, Abraham J (2011) ‘Re-thinking innovation accounting in pharmaceutical regulation: a case study in the deconstruction of “therapeutic advance” and “therapeutic breakthrough”’ Science, Technology & Human Values, 36, 791-815.

Research Students and Studentships

I am an enthusiastic supervisor of doctoral students. I am currently supervising six doctoral students, of which three are ESRC-funded, and four are full-time. I have an 80% success rate at gaining full-time ESRC studentships for D.Phil. candidates and a 100% pass rate without revision for all the doctoral students I have supervised. 85% of my doctoral students have been ESRC-funded, enabling them to conduct fieldwork in UK, US, South Africa and several European countries. Recent and current doctoral work of some of these students are:

regulation of pharmaceuticals in central and eastern Europe (ESRC, sole-supervised)
political sociology of medicalisation and lifestyle pharmaceuticals (ESRC, sole-supervised)
globalisation of medicines control (ESRC, sole-supervised)
international comparison of health promotion policies (OSI-funded, principal supervisor)
public health provision in globalising commercial relations (ESRC, sole-supervised)
food industry, class-differentiated diet and health (ESRC, principal supervisor)
political sociology of counterfeit pharmaceuticals (principal supervisor)
social class and secondary schooling in Britain (principal supervisor)
sociology of healthy volunteer trials (ESRC, principal supervisor)
medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisatin of dystonia (principal supervisor)