Newcastle University

Faculty Member, Institute of Health & Society

Professor of Medical Sociology

About

I research and offer doctoral supervision across the range of social science research topics in medicine and health care. I have particular interests in the sociology of health and illness, the sociology of technology and innovation, and in the sociology of medical knowledge and practice. I am always interested in talking about research projects with potential PhD students - I've supervised about 20 postgraduate dissertations and post-doctoral fellowships to successful conclusion. I can be contacted at c.r.may@ncl.ac.uk.

In November 2010 I am moving to the University of Southampton. I will continue my research there as Professor of Healthcare Innovation, and as Director of Research for the School of Health Sciences.

My work focuses on three key questions:

(1) How do professionals and patients interact, and how are these interactions shaped by particular techniques and technologies in practice? I have special interests in understanding the conditions in which new forms of knowledge and practice become embedded in clinical work, how they shape (and are shaped by) professional-patient interactions, and how they relate to wider societal phenomena. Here, how clinical categories such as 'chronic illness' are understood within policy and practice communities is an important interest. From this work stems questions about the ways that technological innovations in healthcare shape - and are shaped by - experiences and actions connected with illness. Recent studies have included work on Mild Cognitive Impairment, Depression, and Chronic Pain.

(2) How are new knowledge, techniques and technologies made workable and integrated in health care organizations? The vehicle for much of this work has been a longstanding programme of ethnographic research on telemedicine and ehealth technologies, funded variously by the ESRC, Department of Health, and NIHR. These technologies are interesting because they provide a focus for  understanding both micro-social and macro-social change around health care and health services. (See, for example: www.fastuk.org/research/projview.php?id=1334) In recent years, my aim has been to develop a richer sociological understanding of complex interventions in health care and of the dynamic processes that underpin socio-technical change.

(3) How should we explain the dynamic processes of implementation, embedding, and integration that run through new ways of thinking, acting and organizing in healthcare? An important research interest since 2005 has been the development of Normalization Process Theory, a set of explanatory models of social action that help us to understand how new forms of knowledge and material practice become embedded and then integrated into formal organizational settings (see www.normalizationprocess.co.uk for further information.) Because of my work on Normalization Process Theory, I have become increasingly interested in innovation processes and the social dynamics of 'post-adoption' behaviours in the operationalization of new technologies and organizational interventions. Although this work focuses on healthcare systems, it is of fundamental interest because it enables focused investigation of the embedding of all kinds of material practices in everyday social life.

Collaborations are important to me. In Newcastle, I lead the Health Technologies and Human Relations research group in the Institute of Health and Society. We are a multi-disciplinary group concerned with understanding the dynamic relations between professional knowledge, health technologies, and clinical practice, (see http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ihs/research/healthhuman/.)

Beyond Newcastle, I have worked closely with Professor Frances Mair (University of Glasgow) to develop work around the normalization of complex interventions. Frances has been my principal clinical research partner for many years and we have collaborated on a number of important studies on telemedicine - and more recently, with Professor Anne Rogers (Manchester), Dr Elizabeth Murray (UCL), and Prof Catherine Pope (Southampton) on telecare and ehealth systems.

Recent international collaborations include work with Prof Victor Montori (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN) and Prof Jane Gunn (University of Melbourne), and Prof Mary Ellen Purkis (Victoria, British Columbia). These have been especially rewarding.

Contact Information

Homepage: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ihs/research/healthhuman/

Address: Carl May BScEcon PhD AcSS
Professor of Medical Sociology
Institute of Health and Society
Newcastle University
21 Claremont Place
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE2 4AA
United Kingdom

email: c.r.may@ncl.ac.uk

Telephones: Tel + 44 (0)191 222 7046
 Fax + 44 (0)191 222 6043

Instant Messengers/Skype: Skype: CarlRMay