News

Where the river meets the sea: the making of ethical decisions

10 August 2016: What is our place in the natural world – and how do we feel about the scientific advances that are changing the way we live? In her book Making a Good Life , Dr Katharine Dow explores the ethics of assisted reproductive technology in conversations with members of a small Scottish community dedicated to...

Financial cycles of acquisitions and ‘buybacks’ threaten public access to breakthrough drugs

28 July 2016: An analysis of a new drug’s journey to market, published today in the BMJ, shines a light on financial practices that see some major pharmaceutical companies relying on a cycle of acquisitions, profits from high prices, and shareholder-driven manoeuvres that threatens access to medicines for current and...

Making a Good Life: An Ethnography of Nature, Ethics, and Reproduction

28 June 2016: Dr Katharine Dow has published a new book, Making a Good Life: An Ethnography of Nature, Ethics, and Reproduction. Description: Making a Good Life takes a timely look at the ideas and values that inform how people think about reproduction and assisted reproductive technologies. In an era of heightened...

Study finds little change in the IMF’s policy advice, despite rhetoric of reform

5 May 2016: Researchers describe IMF as having an “escalating commitment to hypocrisy”, as study reveals that strict lending conditions have returned to pre-crisis levels, while ‘pro-poor’ targets frequently go unmet. A new study, the largest of its kind, has systematically examined International Monetary Fund (IMF)...

Opinion: More accountability needed in how drugs are priced and reimbursed

23 May 2016: Lawrence King (Department of Sociology) and Piotr Ozieranski (University of Bath) discuss how EU member states use complex policy instruments to determine how much they are willing to pay the pharmaceutical industry for its products. Approving new medicines that hit the market is the responsibility of the EU...

Flexible hours 'controlled by management' cause stress and damage home lives of low-paid workers

20 April 2016: Researcher Alex Wood calls on new DWP Minister Stephen Crabb to acknowledge distinction between flexible scheduling controlled by managers to maximise profit, damaging lives of the low-paid in the process, and high-end professionals who set their own schedules – an issue he says was publicly fudged by Ian...

Opinion: Why new anti-lobbying rules leave small charities out in the cold

16 February 2016: Shana Cohen (Woolf Institute) discusses the anti-advocacy clause in government contracts that means charities will no longer be able to use public money for lobbying activities. Charities will no longer be able to use public money for lobbying activities according to new rules. The anti-advocacy clause in...

Opinion: Morocco’s war on free speech is costing its universities dearly

9 December 2015: Shana Cohen (Department of Sociology) discusses censorship and free speech in Morocco. Morocco frequently turns to the courts when it doesn’t like what its critics have to say. The charges levelled against journalist and historian Professor Maati Monjib reinforce just how common this tendency, which...

The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual

1 November 2015: Professor Patrick Baert has published a new book, The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual , a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015 at publisher Polity. Description: Jean-Paul Sartre is often seen as the quintessential public intellectual, but this was not always the...

Sociology in Portugal: A Short History

November 2015: Dr Filipe Carreira da Silva has published his new book, Sociology in Portugal: A Short History. Description: Sociology in Portugal provides the first English-language account of the history of sociology in Portugal from 1945 to the present day. Banned by the fascist regime until 1974, the...