Rate My Professor Martyn Pickersgill

Professor Martyn Pickersgill holds the Personal Chair of the Sociology of Science and Medicine in the Usher Institute, School of Population Health Sciences, within the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He serves as Co-Head of the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, which he co-founded in 2018 with over £2 million in seed funding from the Wellcome Trust. Pickersgill is also Co-Director of the £5.3 million Wellcome Trust-funded PhD Programme in One Health Models of Disease: Science, Ethics and Society since 2020. Previously, he was Director of Research for the Usher Institute and a founding Associate Director of the SKAPE Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy. He is a member of the Executive Team for the School of Population Health Sciences and holds visiting positions in Australia, Europe, and North America.

A leading sociologist of science and medicine, Pickersgill researches the social, legal, and ethical dimensions of biomedicine and health professions, focusing on epigenetics, neuroscience, psychiatry, and psychology. His projects include Neurology Navigates Neurotech (Principal Investigator, ARIA-funded, 2025–2027), PROMISE: Psychosis Recovery Orientation in Malawi (Co-investigator, Wellcome Trust, 2022–2027), and EthnoCC on experiences of early-stage cervical cancer and fertility-sparing surgery (Principal Investigator, UKRI, 2023–2025). Funded by AHRC, ESRC, MRC, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, Newby Trust, and Wellcome Trust, he has helped secure over £23 million in external grants. Pickersgill's scholarly output includes the monograph Configuring Psychology: Access to Therapy and the Transformation of Psychological Care (Cambridge University Press, 2026), alongside 78 peer-reviewed articles and 11 book chapters. Notable works encompass 'Mapping the new molecular landscape: social dimensions of epigenetics' (2013) and 'Constituting Neurologic Subjects: Neuroscience, Subjectivity and the Mundane Significance of the Brain' (2011). His accolades include Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS, 2021), the Royal Society of Edinburgh Henry Duncan Medal (2015), and British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (2017). Pickersgill advises policy through roles on the ESRC Strategic Advisory Network, Scottish Science Advisory Council, and contributions to UK Department of Health and WHO forums. He serves on editorial boards and engages publics via events and parliamentary groups.