ERC MORTALMED PhD Scholarship - PharmaFlows: Mapping sodium pentobarbital across time and space

About the Project

Project details

This project traces the social life of sodium pentobarbital across time and space, following its transformation from a widely prescribed sedative in the mid-twentieth century to a highly regulated pharmaceutical primarily associated with assisted dying, state executions, and animal euthanasia.

PharmaFlows investigates the historical trajectories and contemporary global circulation of sodium pentobarbital. By mapping the movements of sodium pentobarbital across legal, medical, and commercial infrastructures, the project examines how pharmaceuticals become embedded in broader regimes governing life and death.

The project is structured around two interconnected themes. The first explores the temporal transformations of sodium pentobarbital, examining how its medical, legal, and cultural meanings have shifted over time through historical advertisements, medical literature, press coverage, and pharmaceutical archives. The second investigates the spatial circulation of sodium pentobarbital, tracing how the pharmaceutical moves through different regulatory frameworks, jurisdictions, and socio-political contexts, particularly in relation to assisted dying and capital punishment. In doing so, the project asks what travels alongside pharmaceuticals beyond their material properties, which actors and institutions shape their circulation, and what structural factors facilitate or restrict their global movement.

Methodologically, the project combines archival ethnography, discourse and media analysis, and interviews with key actors involved in the regulation, production, and use of sodium pentobarbital.

Information on the School/Research Group

MORTALMED (Mortal Medicine: The Social Life of a Death-Inducing Pharmaceutical) is a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant) and led by Dr Marcos Freire de Andrade Neves.

Situated at the intersection of Medical Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and Political and Legal Anthropology, the project investigates the global circulation and local uses of sodium pentobarbital, a pharmaceutical employed in assisted dying, state executions, and animal euthanasia.

By tracing sodium pentobarbital across different legal, medical, and political contexts, particularly Switzerland, the United States, and Mexico, the project examines how pharmaceuticals participate in the governance of life and death and contribute to the emergence of what the project conceptualises as “necro-socialities”: social worlds organised around death, dying, and pharmaceutical mediation.

The project adopts a primarily ethnographic and interdisciplinary approach, combining participant observation, interviews, archival ethnography, discourse and media analysis, and assemblage ethnography to follow SP across institutions, borders, and infrastructures.

MORTALMED consists of five interconnected subprojects. The project aims not only to contribute to academic debates on pharmaceuticals, governance, and death, but also to engage broader public audiences through a final public exhibition in Glasgow. The successful applicant will join an internationally oriented and collaborative research environment and contribute actively to the development of this ERC-funded project.

Eligibility

Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• A good Masters degree (or overseas equivalent)
• A demonstratable interest in the topic under investigation
• Study part-time or full-time
• Familiarity with, or interest in, ethnographic research methods, including archival ethnography, discourse and media analysis, and interviewing
• Interest in interdisciplinary and collaborative research practices
• Interest in qualititative data managements and analysis software (e.h. MAXQDA)
• Considered 'Home' or 'Rest of UK' for fee status
• Entry requirements for the Sociology, PhD.

Funding Notes

The scholarship is available as a full-time +4 (4 year) PhD programme only. The programme will commence in October 2026. The full funding package includes:

• An annual maintenance grant (stipend) at the UKRI rate
• Fees at the standard Home tuition fee rate only
• Students can also draw on a Research Training Support Grant, usually up to a maximum of £940 per year