Professor Mike Michael

Research Interests

Mike Michael is a sociologist of science and technology. His research interests include the relation of everyday life to technoscience, biotechnological and biomedical innovation and culture, the interface of the material and the social, the public understanding of/engagement with science, animals and society, process methodology. Recent research projects have addressed the complexities of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis clinical trials (with Marsha Rosengarten), the interdisciplinary use of sociological and speculative design techniques to explore energy demand reduction (with Bill Gaver and Jennifer Gabrys), the ethics of stem cell research (with Claire Williams and Steve Wainwright), and the development of an ‘idiotic methodology’.

Research Supervision

Mike Michael has been involved in the successful supervision of nearly 30 PhDs. He welcomes PhD students interested in any of the following areas: publics, politics and science and technology; sociology of everyday life; biomedicine, biotechnology and culture; material cultures (including animals and society, environment and technology); process methodologies (including interdisciplinary modes of investigation).

Some Recent and Forthcoming Publications

• Michael, M. and Rosengarten, M. (in press). Medicine: Experimentation, Politics, Emergent Bodies. Introduction to special issue of Body and Society.
• Michael, M. (in press). Idiot. Informática na Educação: Teoria e Prática.
• Michael, M. (in press/on-line). “What are we busy doing?”: Engaging the Idiot. Science, Technology and Human Values.
• Michael, M. and Rosengarten, M. (in press). HIV, Globalization and Topology: Of Prepositions and Propositions. Theory, Culture and Society.
• Michael, M. (in press). Toward an Idiotic Methodology: De-signing the Object of Sociology. In Les Back and Nirmal Puwar (eds), Live Sociology (Sociological Review Monographs). Wiley-Blackwell.
• Cook, P.S., Kendall, G., Michael, M. and Brown, N. (in press). Medical Tourism, Xenotourism and Client Expectations: Between Bioscience and Responsibilization. In C. Michael Hall (ed), Medical Tourism: The Ethics, Regulation, and Marketing of Health Mobility. London: Routledge.
• Michael, M. and Rosengarten, M. (in press). Quantitative Objects and Qualitative Things: Ethics and HIV Biomedical Prevention. In P. Harvey, E. Casella and G. Evans, (eds), Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion. London: Routledge.
• Michael, M. (2012). Anecdote. In C. Lury and N. Wakeford (eds). Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. Routledge.
• Stronge, P. and Michael, M. (2012). Suggestion and Satisfaction: On the Actual Occasion of Agency. In M. Schillmeier, J. Passoth and B. Peuker (eds). Agency Without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action (pp.15-30). London: Routledge.
• Horst, M. and Michael, M. (2011). On the shoulders of idiots: Rethinking science communication as ‘event’. Science as Culture, 20, 283-306.
• Michael, M. (2011). Affecting the Technoscientific Body: Stem Cells, Wheeled-Luggage and Emotion. Tecnoscienza: Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 2(1), 53-63.
• Gisler, P. and Michael, M. (2011). Companions at a distance: Technoscience, blood, and the Horseshoe Crab. Society and Animals, 19, 115-136.
• Cook, P.S., Kendall, G., Michael, M. and Brown, N. (2011). The textures of globalization: Biopolitics and the closure of xenotourism. New Genetics and Society, 30, 101-114.
• Michael, M. (2011). Der Mensch als Assemblage. Dinge, Objekte und “Disziplinen.” In Egloff, R., Gisler, P. and Rubin, B. (eds). Modell Mensch: Konturierungen des Menschlichen in den Wissenschaften. Zurich: Chronos.