Tim focuses on the sociology of health using qualitative methods.
His work concentrates on the social relations of access to care, especially in relation to drug use, addictions, HIV and hepatitis C.
His recent and current qualitative research explores the implementation of harm reduction and health care interventions among people who inject drugs, and qualitative longitudinal research exploring how illness is 'made long' in conditions of precarity (focusing on Long Covid).
Informed by science and technology studies, he is undertaking various work in the social study of science and evidence-making, including in the fields of outbreaks, early warning, mathematical modelling, overdose, Covid-19, and hepatitis C.
He also holds a part-time appointment as Professor of the Sociology of Health at the University of New South Wales (Australia).
His work concentrates on the social relations of access to care, especially in relation to drug use, addictions, HIV and hepatitis C.
His recent and current qualitative research explores the implementation of harm reduction and health care interventions among people who inject drugs, and qualitative longitudinal research exploring how illness is 'made long' in conditions of precarity (focusing on Long Covid).
Informed by science and technology studies, he is undertaking various work in the social study of science and evidence-making, including in the fields of outbreaks, early warning, mathematical modelling, overdose, Covid-19, and hepatitis C.
He also holds a part-time appointment as Professor of the Sociology of Health at the University of New South Wales (Australia).
Affiliations
Department of Public Health, Environments and Society
Faculty of Public Health and Policy
Centres
Centre for Evaluation
Centre for Maternal Adolescent Reproductive & Child Health
Teaching
PhD supervision in sociological studies of health practices using qualitative methods; MSc course lead and/or co-lead and lecturing on Qualitative Methodologies (since 2008); MSc co-lead on Sociological Approaches in Health (2023-2024); MSc lecturing on qualitative methods, the sociology of risk, health and evidencing-making, and the sociology of drug use; currently developing a short course on qualitative methods in health research.
Research
Recent and current projects include:
1 Qualitative research on the 'evidence-making' of 'outbreak science', including the use of modelling in viral elimination and disease control (Covid-19 and hepatitis C) and 'early warning' in relation to overdose and drug outbreak;
2 Qualitative longitudinal research on 'illness made long' in precarity among young people affected by Long Covid (UK);
3 Qualitative longitudinal research on the social effects of Covid-19, including Long Covid, among adults (Australia);
4 Qualitative collaborative research on health care worker responses to Covid-19 (Colombia and Australia); and
5 Qualitative research on the health and livelihood effects of illicit drug economies in war to peacetime transitions in Myanmar and Colombia.
1 Qualitative research on the 'evidence-making' of 'outbreak science', including the use of modelling in viral elimination and disease control (Covid-19 and hepatitis C) and 'early warning' in relation to overdose and drug outbreak;
2 Qualitative longitudinal research on 'illness made long' in precarity among young people affected by Long Covid (UK);
3 Qualitative longitudinal research on the social effects of Covid-19, including Long Covid, among adults (Australia);
4 Qualitative collaborative research on health care worker responses to Covid-19 (Colombia and Australia); and
5 Qualitative research on the health and livelihood effects of illicit drug economies in war to peacetime transitions in Myanmar and Colombia.
Selected Publications
Exhausting care: On the collateral realities of caring in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.
2024
Social science & medicine (1982)
Caring for coca, living with chemicals: Towards ecological harm reduction.
2023
The International journal on drug policy
Early warnings and slow deaths: A sociology of outbreak and overdose.
2023
International Journal of Drug Policy
Precarious Lives, Precarious Treatments: Making Drug Treatment Work in Northern Myanmar.
2022
Medical anthropology
Uncomfortable science: How mathematical models, and consensus, come to be in public policy.
2022
Sociology of Health & Illness
Making pandemics big: On the situational performance of Covid-19 mathematical models.
2022
Social Science & Medicine
Excitable models: Projections, targets, and the making of futures without disease.
2021
Sociology of health & illness
Ecologies of drug war and more-than-human health: The case of a chemical at war with a plant.
2020
The International journal on drug policy
