Join us in person for a workshop to launch the Handbook of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology StudiesAbout this Event
Join us in person for Making Medicines, Making Worlds: Agenda for research on pharma & society— A workshop to launch the Handbook of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology Studies
Pharmaceuticals are more than medicines. They are scientific achievements, technological artefacts, commercial products, political objects, and instruments of social change. Their development, production, regulation, distribution, and use raise fundamental questions about health, power, inequality, innovation, and the relationships between science and society.
This workshop brings together scholars working at the intersection of pharmaceuticals, science and technology studies (STS), sociology of health and illness, political economy, and the social sciences to explore how we might better understand—and reshape—the worlds of pharmaceuticals. Marking the launch of the , the event will use contributions to the Handbook as a starting point for a broader conversation about the past, present, and future of social studies of pharmaceuticals.
The workshop will create space to exchange ideas, debate emerging challenges, and identify opportunities for collaboration. We seek to explore these and other questions:
· How are pharmaceutical innovation and production being transformed by new technologies, financialization, and changing regulatory landscapes?
· What can STS contribute to understanding pharmaceutical knowledge production processes resulting in persistent inequalities in access, affordability, and availability?
· How can pharmaceutical manufacturing processes be connected to broader geo-political, nation, and market building?
· How are pharmaceutical markets made, shaped and reshaped by interests that can jeopardize rather than support health and wellbeing?
· How are governance regimes changing to include new sets of actors enacting diverse roles and aspirations?
· What are some of the implications for diverse forms of pharmaceutical use, misuse, and non-use amongst patients, prescribers, publics and more-than-human actors?
· How might scholarship engage with alternative models of pharmaceutical innovation that prioritize societal needs over commercial returns?
Bringing together established and emerging researchers, the workshop aims to strengthen a community of inquiry around pharmaceuticals and society, forge new intellectual connections, and develop a shared agenda for future research.
Join us to celebrate the Handbook, challenge conventional understandings of pharmaceuticals, and collectively imagine new directions for the study of pharmaceuticals and society.
CONFIRMED SPEAKERS & PROVISION TITLES INCLUDE
· Joan Busfield – “The financialization of the pharmaceutical industry: The case of Novo Nordisk's Wegovy”
· Jin Ding & Michael Hopkins (University of Sussex) – “How can innovation policy address “market failures” in the development of novel medicines?”
· Conor Douglas (York University, Toronto) and Shir Grunebaum (Oxford Brooks University) – “Social pharmaceutical innovation (SPIN): A sensitizing concept for challenges in rare diseases”
· Tineke Kleinhout-Vliek (University College Dublin) – “Universal aspirations and contextual decisions: The Essential Medicines List and Health Technology Assessment”
· Paul Martin (University of Sheffield) – “The dynamics of “Orphanization” and the move towards precision medicine”
· Josuha Moon (University of Sussex) – “From bench to bedside and back again”
· Michael Morrison (University of Oxford) - “Manufacturing and production of advanced therapies: A case of blurred boundaries”
The workshop is supported by the Wellcome Trust funded project 219875/Z/19/Z 'Orphan drugs: high prices, access to medicines and the transformation of biopharmaceutical innovation' (Principal Investigator Prof. Paul Martin, University of Sheffield) - https://sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/our-work/biosocial-humans/orphanisation-home
Event venue
Friends House, 173-177 Euston Road, London, United Kingdom
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.