Professor Adam Hedgecoe

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

Expertise:

• Sociology of biomedical science (especially genomics)
• The social shaping of socio-technical expectations
• Sociology of bioethics

I am a sociologist of science and technology, although my work sits at the intersection of STS, medical sociology and bioethics.

I have two main areas of interest. The first is the impact on professional practice of genetic tests, which I have published on since 1996, and which I have explored through my Ph.D. (which looked at the geneticization of medical discourse), a Wellcome trust funded postdoc (on the clinical uptake of pharmacogenetics) and my previous role as Associate Director of the ESRC Cesagen centre. I am currently publishing from my Wellcome Trust funded project looking at the challenges around clinical uncertainty raise by new sequencing technologies.

My second area of interest is in the relationship between sociology and bioethics, both in terms of what empirical sociology can offer bioethicists (sociology in bioethics) and the sociological exploration of bioethics as a social phenomenon (sociology of bioethics). In this latter area, I ran a four-country comparative ethnography of Research Ethics Committees (RECs) and have a particular interest in the history and sociology of RECs in the UK.

Biography

Career Overview

Following a mixed academic background, I taught in the Sociology Department at Sussex University for seven years. I moved to Cardiff in 2009 to help run the ESRC funded CESAGen research centre after which I held various roles in the School of Social Sciences, including Director of Research.

Education and qualifications

Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science.  1996 – 2000: Department of Science & Technology Studies, University College London. 

M.A. in Applied Philosophy (Distinction).  1993 – 1994: Department of Philosophy, University of Hull.

B.A. (Hons.) in Philosophy and Psychology (2.1).  1990 – 1993: University of Durham, UK.

Committees and reviewing

Board Member, Governing Board, Nuffield Council on Bioethics (2024 –  )

Ethics Advisory Committee, UK Biobank (2024 –  )

Ethics Advisory Committee, Genome England (2024 –  )

Wellcome Trust Open Research Advisory Board (2016 –  )

Supervisions

I have supervised PhD students looking at parents' attitudes to vaccination in the wake of the MMR debates, the development of IVF services in Mexico, amniocentesis for Downs Syndrome, the impact of Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis technologies, and the personal and professional challenges raised by personal genomics amongst others.  

I am interested in supervising anyone interested in the sociology of biomedical science or the public understanding of science.