Greg Hollin
Department of Sociological Studies
Wellcome Trust Research Fellow
Co-lead of the “Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society” (STeMiS) research theme
+44 114 222 468
Full contact details
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Greg joined the Department of Sociological Studies in 2022. Following undergraduate and master’s degrees in Psychology at The University of Birmingham, Greg undertook a PhD at the Institute for Science and Society in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at The University of Nottingham (2010-2013). In 2014 Greg was awarded a Mildred Blaxter post-doctoral fellowship, based in Nottingham and funded by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness.
In 2016, Greg moved to the School of Sociology and Social Policy at University of Leeds following the award of research funding from the Wellcome Trust’s Strategic Support Fund. At the conclusion of this fellowship, Greg took up the position of Lecturer in Social Theory at the same institution. In 2018, he was awarded a Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Science by The Wellcome Trust (2018-2022) and moved to Sheffield following the award of a Wellcome Trust University Award (2022-2027).
- Research interests
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Greg’s research is primarily informed by Medical Sociology and Science and Technology Studies. A central concern of this research is to explore how the contemporary psy- and neuro-sciences shape the social world.
Greg’s work on autism has tried to understand how the condition came to be understood (within certain disciplines) as a form of ‘social disorder’ and has sought to show that cognitive- and neuro-psychology draw upon particular notions of the ‘social’ in order to make that claim. This research has had a particular focus upon how autism is mediated through various forms of diagnostic, emerging, and mundane technologies.
In September 2018, Greg commenced project entitled Hard Knock Life: Negotiating Concussion and Dementia in Sport. This project sought to explore the increasing anxiety about the risks associated with concussion suffered during sporting activities and how practitioners understand themselves, their brains, and their conduct given the possibility of brain injury. Greg’s current work continues to explore the relationship between traumatic brain injury and neurodegeneration by exploring how different scientific disciplines seek to understand the role that the environment plays in dementia.
Finally, and through a number of collaboratory pieces, Greg has sought to explore the social world as something which is ‘more than human’ in its composition. This work has explored laboratory beagles and bed bug epidemics, as well as theoretical work in feminist technoscience.
- Publications
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Edited books
- Complicity: Methodologies of power, politics and the ethics of knowledge production. Oxford: Wiley.
Journal articles
- Commentary: Three questions for the study of traumatic brain injury in animals. Anatomical Record. View this article in WRRO
- Complicity: Methodologies of power, politics and the ethics of knowledge production. Sociology of Health & Illness, 44(S1), 1-21.
- Estranged companions : bed bugs, biologies, and affective histories. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. View this article in WRRO
- Consider the woodpecker: the contested more-than-human ethics of biomimetic technology and traumatic brain injury. Social Studies of Science. View this article in WRRO
- “Learning to listen to them and ask the right questions.” Bennet Omalu, scientific objectivities, and the witnessing of a concussion crisis. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 3. View this article in WRRO
- Within a single lifetime: recent writings on autism. History of the Human Sciences, 33(5), 167-178. View this article in WRRO
- Making a murderer : media renderings of brain injury and Aaron Hernandez as a medical and sporting subject. Social Science & Medicine, 244. View this article in WRRO
- From the profound to the mundane : questionnaires as emerging technologies in autism genetics. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 44(4), 634-659. View this article in WRRO
- Abundance in the Anthropocene. The Sociological Review, 67(2), 357-373. View this article in WRRO
- Autism scientists' reflections on the opportunities and challenges of public engagement: a qualitative analysis.. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. View this article in WRRO
- The categorisation of resistance : interpreting failure to follow a proposed line of action in the diagnosis of autism amongst young adults. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(7), 1215-1232. View this article in WRRO
- A feminist menagerie. Feminist Review, 118(1), 61-79. View this article in WRRO
- (Dis)entangling Barad : materialisms and ethics. Social Studies of Science, 47(6), 918-941. View this article in WRRO
- Both maker and writer: Steve Silberman and the history of autism. BioSocieties, 12(4), 635-640. View this article in WRRO
- Failing, hacking, passing : autism, entanglement, and the ethics of transformation. BioSocieties, 12(4), 611-633. View this article in WRRO
- Charisma and the clinic. Social Theory & Health, 15(2), 223-240. View this article in WRRO
- Autistic heterogeneity: linking uncertainties and indeterminacies. Science as Culture, 26(2), 209-231. View this article in WRRO
- Care, Laboratory Beagles and Affective Utopia. Theory, Culture & Society, 33(4), 27-49. View this article in WRRO
- Reply to 'Clarity of meaning in IPCC press conference'. Nature Climate Change, 5(11), 963-963.
- Infancy, autism, and the emergence of a socially disordered body. Social Science & Medicine, 143, 279-286.
- Tension between scientific certainty and meaning complicates communication of IPCC reports. Nature Climate Change, 5(8), 753-756.
- Constructing a social subject. History of the Human Sciences, 27(4), 98-115.
- The language and policy of care and parenting: Understanding the uncertainty about key players’ roles in foster care provision. Children and Youth Services Review, 33(11), 2198-2206.
- Cold Pressor Pain Reduces Phobic Fear But Fear Does Not Reduce Pain. The Journal of Pain, 10(10), 1058-1064.
- The wrestler and his world: Precarious workers, post-truth politics, and inauthentic activism. Cultural anthropology.
Chapters
- Niemowlęctwo, autyzm i pojawienie się społecznie zaburzonego ciała [Polish translation of: Hollin, GJS. & Pilnick, A. (2015). Infancy, autism, and the emergence of a socially disordered body. Social Science and Medicine, 143, 279-286.] In Witeska-Młynarczyk A (Ed.), Antropologia Psychiatrii Dzieci i Młodzieży: Teksty Wybrane [‘Anthropology of Psychiatry in Children and Adolescents: Selected Texts’]
- Laboratory beagles and affective co-productions of knowledge, Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds (pp. 163-177).
- The animal within: the ethics and epistemics of bio-inspired solutions to sport’s concussion crisis In Townsend S, Phillips M, Olive R & Osmond G (Ed.), Head in the Game: Critical Sociocultural Analyses of Brain Trauma in Sport Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. View this article in WRRO
Book reviews
- Disability and Other Human Questions by Dan Goodley (Emerald Publishing, 2021), 145pp.. International Journal of Disability and Social Justice, 2(2). View this article in WRRO
- Lockdown texts : The most important of the unimportant things. BioSocieties, 15(3), 472-474. View this article in WRRO
- Stephen T. Casper; Delia Gavrus (Editors). The History of the Brain and Mind Sciences: Technique, Technology, Therapy. Isis, 109(4), 861-862. View this article in WRRO
- Multiple autisms: spectrums of advocacy and genomic science. New Genetics and Society, 36(4), 404-405.
- Scull, A. Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine. London: Thames & Hudson. Sociology of Health and Illness, 39(6), 980-981. View this article in WRRO
- Brave New World: Eugenics, Discipline Formation, and the Biosocial. Science as Culture, 26(3), 413-417.
- Review: Thom van Dooren’s Flight Ways, New York: Columbia.. Somatosphere. View this article in WRRO
- Review: Jamie Lorimer, ‘Wildlife in the Anthropocene’. Theory, Culture and Society. View this article in WRRO
- To obey and to tell. History of the Human Sciences, 29(1), 123-127. View this article in WRRO
- Book Review: Martyn Pickersgill and Ira Van Keulen (eds), Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 18(2), 217-219. View this article in WRRO
- Fight the (Bio)power. Science as Culture, 21(4), 566-572. View this article in WRRO
Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries
- Complicity: Methodologies of power, politics and the ethics of knowledge production. Oxford: Wiley.
- Research group
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At the University of Sheffield, Greg is:
- Co-lead of the “Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society” (STeMiS) research theme.
- An executive member of iHuman.
- A member of Sheffield Animal Studies Research Centre (ShARC).
More widely, Greg is:
- On the steering group for the Science and Technology Studies in the Midlands and North (STSMN) research network.
- A member of the British Sociological Association.
- A member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST).
- Grants
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Title: On Trend: Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and the Contentious Reimagining of Alzheimer Disease-Related Dementia as Environmental Diseases
Dates: 2022 – 2027
Funder: The Wellcome Trust
Role: Primary investigator
Value: £319,970
Title: Caring for former athletes who live with neurological disorders.
Dates: 2023 – 2024
Funder: Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness/Nottingham Trent University
Role: Co-investigator. (Full team: Matthews, C. (PI), Pilnick, A., Hollin, G., Malcolm, D., & Hunter, A.)
Value: £18,000
Title: Vital Circulations: A Framework for Understanding Social Dynamics in and Beyond a Pandemic
Dates: 2021 – 2022
Funder: White Rose Consortium
Role: Co-investigator. (Full team: Kim, J. (PI), Williams, R. (PI), Brown, N. (PI), Jacob, MA., O’Connor, R., Hollin, G., Stark, J., Martin, P., White, L., Chattoo, S., Buse, C.)
Value: £14,945.
Title: Hard Knock Life: Negotiating Concussion and Dementia in Sport
Dates: 2018 - 2022
Funder: The Wellcome Trust
Role: Primary investigator
Value: £187,063.
Title: Institutional Strategic Support Fund Fellowship
Dates: 2016
Funder: The Wellcome Trust/The University of Leeds
Role: Primary investigator
Value: £22,029.
Title: Locating Autism
Dates: 2014 - 2015
Funder: Mildred Blaxter Fellowship from the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness
Role: Primary investigator
Value: £37,971.
- Teaching interests
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I convene the undergraduate module “Sociology of Health, Illness and Medicine” (SCS3028). Questions relating to health and illness are amongst the most crucial facing us today and, from before we’re born until the moment we die, we are profoundly shaped by our engagements with medicine. In this module we examine the ways in which our bodies, minds, and societies are formed through our engagements with, and understandings of, health, illness, and medicine. We explore intersecting inequalities in healthcare provision; patients’ experiences of ill health and activists’ fight for recognition; contemporary health crises; and the COVID pandemic. And we will use these critical examples in order to develop a nuanced understanding of the role of health, illness, and medicine within contemporary society.
- PhD Supervision
Previous PhD students have studied topics including policy making around cognitive enhancing drugs and the use of queer theory to understand autism spectrum conditions.
I am always interested in supporting future projects that are oriented towards medical sociology and/or Science and Technology Studies, particularly (but certainly not exclusively) if they concern the psy- or neuro-sciences—or subjectivity/mental health more generally. Given that I arrived in sociology via training in experimental psychology I’m particularly keen to support applications from those with inter- or alternative-disciplinary backgrounds.