Nicola Sugden is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS). Her current research is an ethnography of health and care data innovation in Scotland as part of “Data and the Healthcare ‘Revolution’” (dare.ed.ac.uk), where she is following attempts to harmonise patient pathways and data journeys; the ways that storytelling and worldbuilding animate innovation; and how data practices are changing what it means to be a patient and a citizen.
Trained in the history and philosophy of science and influenced by Science and Technology Studies (STS), she has brought her overarching interests in human development and the life course, technoscience, and the politics of knowledge to bear on a series of empirical domains: her past work has interrogated evolution and genetics; psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry; child development; and disability. Her PhD thesis Winnicott's Worlds: A History of Psychoanalysis and Childhood in Britain, c.1920 - c.1975 was shortlisted for the Society for the History of Children and Youth Dissertation Prize in 2020. Before joining the University of Edinburgh, she was a Visiting Fellow at the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Washington, D.C..
Nicola is always interested in finding ways to bring her interests in science fiction and fantasy, crafting, play, and games together with her academic work, whether as theoretical touchpoints and activities for thinking, methods for engagement, or community-nurturing shared activities.