Simon Williams

Biography

Simon completed his doctoral studies (in medical sociology) at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, in 1990. He joined the Department of Sociology at Warwick in 1992, first as a lecturer, then as a Warwick Research Fellow (WRF), becoming a Reader in 2000 and a full Professor of Sociology in 2006. Prior to this he was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS) at the University of Kent. Simon is a passionate teacher and researcher with strong conviction in the enduring power and promise of sociology and the social sciences in a complex, changing world. He is also strongly committed to interdisciplinary conversations, particularly those of a biosocial and biopolitical nature, and to wider engagements with diverse audiences and publics, including media profiling of his work. Simon has served on the editorial boards of a number of key international journals in his field (such as Sociology of Health & Illness; Health; Social Theory & Health). He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Research Interest

Simon's research to date falls into the following interrelated areas of sociology and politics pertaining to the body, health and emotion; bioscience, biomedicine, biopolitics; media, culture and everyday/night life. He also has longstanding interests in social theory (particularly realist social theory, relational sociology, psychoanalytically informed social theory, and biologically minded social theory) and social research methods (both quantitative and qualitative), including newly emerging interests in biosocial methods and complexity within the biological and social sciences today.