Dr Julia Swallow
Department of Sociological Studies
Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow
Full contact details
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Julia joined the Department of Sociological Studies in 2024. Following undergraduate degree in Sociology at the University of Liverpool and masters degree in Social Research at the University of York, Julia undertook an Economic and Social Research Council funded PhD in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds (2012 – 2015). Following PhD, she was employed as Research Fellow (2016 – 2020) on the Wellcome Trust project ‘Translations and transformations in patienthood: cancer in the post-genomics era’ (PIs: Professor Anne Kerr (Leeds then Glasgow) and Professor Sarah-Cunningham Burley (Edinburgh)) at the University of Leeds. Julia then moved to the University of Edinburgh to undertake a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship in Humanities and Social Science (2020 – 2024). In 2024, she moved to Sheffield following the award of a Wellcome Trust Career Development (2024 – 2030) in Humanities and Social Science.
- Research interests
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Julia’s research lies at the intersection of medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS), where she analyses developments in contemporary biomedicine, in areas such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and cancer.
Julia’s work on Alzheimer’s disease has focussed on the role of technologies for diagnosing the condition in memory clinics, within the context of a growing ageing population. In particular, she has theorised on the contingency of classification in relation to how practitioners navigate the boundaries of disease in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.
Julia is focussed more broadly on the experiences and challenges of contemporary biomedicine with regards to genomic technologies and the role of the immune system in cancer, for patients and for practitioners.
In February 2020, Julia commenced a project entitled ‘Harnessing the little white cells’: Tracing practices of immunity in cancer. This project focussed on immunotherapy treatments in cancer, exploring how these novel treatments are shifting how cancer is approached, managed and experienced. Through this fellowship she contributed to feminist STS discussions concerning the role of metaphor and discourse in immunology and offered new theorisation on the material significance of discursive framing with a particular emphasis on patients’ embodied experiences.
Julia’s current work, funded as a Wellcome Trust Career Development award, continues to explore the mutual shaping of emerging epistemic transformations in biomedicine with contemporary society by exploring how chronic inflammation as ‘medicine’s new frontier’ is (re)shaping understandings and experiences of degenerative disease.
With colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, Julia has sought to consolidate social science research on immunity to reflect the renewed biomedical interest in the immune system and its relationship to health and disease.
- Publications
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Books
- Personalised cancer medicine. Manchester University Press.
Journal articles
- The immune system, immunity and immune logics: troubling fixed boundaries and (re)conceptualizing relations. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 11(1), 1-12. View this article in WRRO
- Enrolling the body as active agent in cancer treatment: tracing immunotherapy metaphors and materialities. Social Studies of Science, 54(2), 305-321. View this article in WRRO
- How and why to use ‘vulnerability’: an interdisciplinary analysis of disease risk, indeterminacy and normality. Medical Humanities, 50(1), 125-134. View this article in WRRO
- Laboratory practices, potentiality, and material patienthood in genomic cancer medicine. Science, Technology, & Human Values. View this article in WRRO
- Cancer, COVID-19, and the need for critique [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. Wellcome Open Research, 5. View this article in WRRO
- Diagnostic layering : patient accounts of breast cancer classification in the molecular era. Social Science & Medicine, 278. View this article in WRRO
- Personalised cancer medicine: future crafting in the genomic era. View this article in WRRO
- Accessing targeted therapies for cancer: self and collective advocacy alongside and beyond mainstream cancer charities. New Genetics and Society, 40(1), 112-131. View this article in WRRO
- Cancer, COVID-19, and the need for critique [version 1; peer review: 2 approved]. Wellcome Open Research, 5. View this article in WRRO
- Accomplishing an adaptive clinical trial for cancer: valuation practices and care work across the laboratory and the clinic. Social Science & Medicine, 252. View this article in WRRO
- Constructing classification boundaries in the memory clinic: negotiating risk and uncertainty in constituting mild cognitive impairment. Sociology of Health & Illness, 42(S1), 99-113. View this article in WRRO
- Markers of biology and “being”: imaginaries of deterioration and the biological redefinition of Alzheimer's disease. New Genetics and Society, 39(1), 13-30. View this article in WRRO
- Genomic research and the cancer clinic: uncertainty and expectations in professional accounts. New Genetics and Society, 38(2), 222-239. View this article in WRRO
- Online accounts of gene expression profiling in early-stage breast cancer: Interpreting genomic testing for chemotherapy decision making. Health Expectations, 22(1), 74-82. View this article in WRRO
- Fear and anxiety: affects, emotions and care practices in the memory clinic. Social Studies of Science, 49(2), 227-244. View this article in WRRO
- Expectant futures and an early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: Knowing and its consequences. Social Science & Medicine, 184, 57-64. View this article in WRRO
- Unsettling the treatment imperative? Chemotherapy decision‐making in the wake of genomic techniques. Sociology of Health & Illness. View this article in WRRO
Chapters
- Understanding Cognitive Screening Tools: Navigating Uncertainty in Everyday Clinical Practice, Emerging Technologies for Diagnosing Alzheimer's Disease (pp. 123-139). Palgrave Macmillan UK
Book reviews
- Personalised cancer medicine. Manchester University Press.
- Research group
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At the University of Sheffield, Julia is:
- Member of the “Science, Technology, and Medicine in Society” (STeMiS) research theme.
- Member of iHuman.
More widely, Julia is:
- Co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Science and Technology Studies Study Group.
- A member of the British Sociological Association.
- Teaching interests
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I have taught and co-convened a wide-range of modules within a Sociology department and medical school, engaging critically with the relationship between medicine, health, illness and society.
Postgraduate Supervision
I am interested in supporting projects that are situated within the fields of medical sociology and/or Science and Technology Studies.