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Professor John Abraham

A head and shoulders photo of Prof John Abraham

Professor John Abraham (BSc. MSc. MA. D.Phil. (Sussex))

Professor of Sociology and Pharmaceutical Policy
E: J.Abraham@bsms.ac.uk
Location: Watson Building, University of Brighton, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9PH

Area of expertise: Pharmaceuticals and Society; Pharmaceuticalisation; Drug Safety; Realism in Science, Technology & Society (STS); Social Class and Educational Inequality in Britain; The Political Economy of Food; Mathematics & Society; Public Sociology of Global Environment and Development

Research areas: International Comparisons of Medicines Safety and Efficacy; Government Regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry; Clinical and Non-Clinical Risk Assessment of Pharmaceuticals; International Harmonisation of Techno-Scientific Standards for Drug Regulation; Pharmaceutical Development, Testing, and Innovation; Pharmaceutical Patents and Intellectual Property Rights; Theories of the Regulatory State; the Medical-Industrial and Patient-Industrial Complexes; Pharmaceutical Cost-effectiveness and Pricing; Access to Essential Medicines; Sociology of Science; New Dimensions of STS; Social-class Differentiation/Polarisation processes and associated Educational Inequality/Policy; Conceptualisations of Social Class; Ideologies of ‘Intelligence’; Models of Ethnography; International Trends and Development Theories of Malnutrition; Food Additive Testing and Regulation; The Socio-Political History and Function of Mathematics; Conceptualisations of Public Sociology during the last 35 years of Global Environmental Crisis.

Personal website: johnabraham.uk

Biography

A Professor of Sociology currently at BSMS, John Abraham has been Full-Professor of Sociology at King’s-College-London (KCL) since 2013, and previously Personal Chair and Full-Professor of Sociology at Sussex University from the 1990s. Initially trained as a mathematician, John worked with the Radical Statistics Group of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. Subsequently, he earned M.Sc. in History-and Social-Studies-of-Science/Science-Policy-Studies, M.A. in Sociology, and a D.Phil. in Politics. John has published and taught widely across sociology, including pharmaceuticals & society; medical sociology; science, technology & society (STS); sociology of education; political economy of food; public sociology of global environment/development; and mathematics & society. This comprises numerous books and hundreds of articles/papers/reports/presentations/lectures. In his mid-twenties, John co-founded the WWF-funded Sussex public-sociology project on Global Environment/Development. Widely acknowledged as founder of the field ‘Pharmaceuticals & Society’ within sociology/social-sciences in the 1990s, he was founding Director of the ESRC-funded Excellence Centre for Research in Health and Medicine (CRHaM) from 1999-2012 at Sussex. John was appointed to numerous UK-wide ESRC Research-Grants Committees, including Chair of ESRC’s main social science Research-Grants Panel from 2009-2014. As the UK’s leading social scientist on pharmaceuticals policy, John was appointed Special Expert Adviser to the UK House-of-Commons Health-Select Committee. He was centrally involved in its eight-month ‘Inquiry into the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry’ (2004-2005) – the most comprehensive Parliamentary investigation of the pharmaceutical sector since 1914. For many years, John has sat on Editorial Boards of Current Drug Safety, Social Studies of Science, and New Genetics & Society.

Research

From 1993, John has run the world’s largest and most sustained social science research programme on pharmaceuticals & society, directing over a dozen international ESRC and Wellcome-Trust-funded research projects, usually as sole applicant and Principal Investigator. His 1995 book, Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry, was the first major STS publication in the field, which he reinforced with four subsequent books. Awarded Professorial Scholar at universities worldwide, more recently, he presented evidence to the 2020 Baroness Cumberlege Independent Inquiry on the Review of Medicines and Medical Device Safety, and has delivered public lectures to legislative bodies, the WHO, BMA, Royal College of Psychiatrists, International Society for Pharmacovigilance, European Science Foundation, Society of Legal Scholars, drug regulatory agencies, European Commission, European Congress of Toxicology, Royal College of Surgeons, International Society of Social Pharmacy, International Health Technology Assessment Association, European Public Health Alliance, and Health Action International, among others. John regularly works with television/radio documentary-makers, film producers, global law-firms, and journalists about high-profile pharmaceutical cases. As an STS scholar, John researches realist prospects for sociology of science, while in sociology of education, he published the first book-length ethnographic study of comprehensive schooling in Britain streamed by setting – the dominant mode of streaming.

BACKGROUND IMAGE FOR PANEL

Teaching

John began teaching undergraduates in higher education at 22 years old. His research programme in ‘Pharmaceuticals & Society’ has been complemented with over 25 years of continuous teaching of undergraduate, postgraduate, and many doctoral students since 1995, as well as supervising numerous post-doctoral researchers. He has created, designed, taught, and assessed a postgraduate Master’s course in ‘Pharmaceuticals & Society’ at KCL (2014-2021), and advanced undergraduate courses in ‘Sociology of Medicines & Health’, and ‘Medicines, Health & Development’ at Sussex University (1995-2012). John also created, designed, taught, and assessed postgraduate and advanced undergraduate courses in ‘Science, Technology & Society’ at Reading and Sussex Universities between 1992 and 2010. He created, taught, and assessed an undergraduate course in ‘Food & Society’ at Reading and Sussex during the 1990s and conducted doctoral supervision in this field in the 2010s. John has also taught about general sociology, social class/education, and global development theory at Reading and Sussex Universities, and undertook doctoral supervision in sociology of education in the 2010s. My doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers have advanced to become senior academics, directors of charities, directors of hospital organizations, directors of international public health advocacy organisations; and directors of pharmaceutical contract organisations, among other things.

Selected publications

John Abraham (forthcoming 2025) Pharmaceuticalization of Society, 250pp. Routledge Book.

John Abraham (forthcoming 2025) Controlling Pharmaceutical Risks: Science, Cancer and the Geneticization of Drug Testing, 295pp. Routledge Book.

John Abraham and Gowree Balendran (in press, 2025) ‘The political sociology of NICE: Investigating pharmaceutical cost-effectiveness regulation in the UK’ Sociology of Health & Illness 9000wds.

John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2020) ‘International and Temporal Comparative Analysis of UK and US Drug Safety Regulation in Changing Political Contexts’ Social Science & Medicine 25 (June): 113005-15.

John Abraham and Courtney Davis (2013) Unhealthy Pharmaceutical Regulation: Innovation, Politics and Promissory Science, 348pp. Palgrave Book.

John Abraham and Helen Lawton Smith (eds.) (2003) Regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry, 278pp. Palgrave Book.

John Abraham and Graham Lewis (2000) Regulating Medicines in Europe: Competition, Expertise and Public Health, 254pp. Routledge Book.

John Abraham and Julie Sheppard (1999) The Therapeutic Nightmare: The Battle Over the World’s most Controversial Sleeping Pill, 192pp. Earthscan Book.

John Abraham (1995) Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry, 310pp. UCL Press Book.

John Abraham, J (1995) Divide and School: Gender and Class Dynamics in Comprehensive Education, 176pp. Taylor & Francis Book.

Abraham, J. (1991) Food and Development: The Political Economy of Hunger and the Modern Diet, 304pp. Kogan Page Book.