Professor Martyn Pickersgill FAcSS is a sociologist of science and medicine. Martyn is currently engaged in research on biomedicine and society in the UK and the US, and with collaborators in the context of Australia, China, Japan, and Malawi.
Martyn holds a Personal Chair in the Sociology of Science and Medicine, and conducts research, teaching, and engagement in the social dimensions of biomedicine. He is also Director of Research in the Medical School's Usher Institute. In 2020, Martyn became Co-Director of a new £5.3m Wellcome Trust PhD Programme in 'One Health Animal Models of Disease: Science, Ethics and Society', which brings together expertise from the social and biomedical sciences. In 2018, he co-founded the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society through seed and continuing funding totalling over £1.9m from the Wellcome Trust, where he remains an Associate Director.
Through various grants and fellowships, Martyn's research has focused primarily on the social, legal and ethical dimensions of biomedicine and the health professions. In particular, his work has considered the sociologies of (epi)genetics, neuroscience, and mental health. This has been supported through a range of funders as PI/Co-PI/Co-I, including the AHRC, ESRC, MRC, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, and Wellcome Trust.
Martyn holds a variety of affiliations with bioscience, social science, and humanities institutes across the University of Edinburgh and beyond. He contributes to a number of UK and international advisory committees, funding panels, and editorial boards, including through membership of the ESRC Strategic Advisory Network. Martyn has held visiting positions at universities in Europe and North America, is a recipient of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Henry Duncan Medal, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Professor Pickersgill joined the SSAC on 1 December 2022.
