Brown has spent the last three decades in a variety of roles in higher education, which have encompassed research leadership as well as the development and management of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes. 

I have spent the last three decades in a variety of roles in higher education, which have encompassed research leadership as well as the development and management of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching programmes. That ‘bread and butter’ work has put me in a position where I have been able to explore a variety of interesting topics around which to write and research. These have included language and philosophy, the historical sociology of Wales, gender and sexuality, and most importantly for SOFU, the social study of health. Together with SOFU lead Paul Crawford we expanded the study of language in health away from its former focus on doctor-patient communication towards other disciplines such as nursing. We also developed a unique perspective which we have called the ‘health humanities’ which embraces a wider variety of stakeholder groups and professions than the traditional medical humanities.

I have been fortunate to serve as part of the senior leadership team of a number of UKRI funded projects including Creative Practice as Mutual Recovery (AH/K003364/1), Mental health literacy in urban and rural communities in Kerala India (ES/S00145X/1) and An exploration of mental health and resilience narratives of migrant workers in India using community theatre methodology (AH/R006148/1). I serve as a regular reviewer for UKRI, particularly where proposals lie at the intersection between the arts, creative disciplines and the social and health sciences. I have also reviewed for the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation and the NIHR. I have served as a reviewer for the Excellence in Research Australia project (the Australian version of the REF) contributing to methodology and the review of outputs. The students and early career colleagues I have supervised and mentored have in many cases gone on to enjoy considerably more prestigious appointments than me – one as a PVC for another university, for example.

In addition to this, I have also enjoyed developing new theoretical perspectives in the study of health. I was at the forefront of extending the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu into health research in the early 2000s, and have recently developed a fascination with the idea that conversations about health are, in an important sense, conversations about knowledge, so I have been working on applying ideas from social epistemology to the interpretation of healthcare experience.