The Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research

James Nazroo

Professor of Sociology

James Nazroo

Tel: 0161 275 2495

james.nazroo@manchester.ac.uk

Room G.25
CCSR
School of Social Sciences
Humanities Bridgeford Street
University of Manchester
MANCHESTER
M13 9PL

 

Professional biography

 

I joined Sociology at the University of Manchester in October 2006. My interest in Sociology began while I was studying Medicine at St. George's Hospital Medical School in the early 1980s, when I became aware of a range of sociological inquiries into health and the health professions that problematised much that we take for granted – for example, work on the sick role, inequalities in health, occupational closure and professionalisation, and deviance, stigma and institutions. At that time the London Medical Schools offered an intercalated BSc in Medical Sociology, which I took and which hooked me on Sociology. After completing my medical training, I began my post-graduate training in Sociology, first studying on the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College MSc in Sociology of Health and Illness (while working part-time as a hospital doctor) and then a PhD in Sociology at UCL (while working as a researcher/lecturer).

 

Before coming to Manchester, I was a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy and Social Sciences at Royal Holloway – where I worked primarily on gender inequalities in mental health, and also on marital violence – a Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute – where I worked primarily on ethnic inequalities in health – and more recently a Senior Lecturer, Reader and then Professor of Medical Sociology in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UCL – where I was head of the Health and Social Surveys Research Group and continued my research on ethnic inequalities in health, alongside a growing body of research on ageing. I continue to hold an honorary position at UCL.


Specific research interests

 

Issues of inequality, social justice and underlying processes of stratification have been the primary focus of my research activities, which have centered on gender, ethnicity, ageing, and the intersections between these. My work on ethnic inequalities in health began with describing differences in health across and within broad ethnic groupings and assessing the contribution that social disadvantage might make to these differences. Central to this has been developing an understanding of the links between ethnicity, racism, class and inequality. This work draws on critical theory and critical realism, with an increasing focus on comparative analysis (across groups, time and place) to try and tap underlying processes. My research on ethnic inequalities in health covers a variety of dimensions, including general health, mental health, cardiovascular disease and sexual health, although my general approach is to use health as an outcome that marks social inequalities and allows us to investigate underlying processes. This work has been funded by the ESRC, MRC, the Department of Health, and the NHS Executive, among others, and involves collaborations with colleagues in the US, Canada, Europe and New Zealand – as well as the UK.

 

The second theme in my current work is social and health inequalities in aging populations, with a particular interest in the 'transmission' of inequalities across the lifecourse, patterns of 'retirement', and formal and informal social and civic participation. Here I have conducted studies on quality of life for older people among different ethnic goups in the UK (funded by the ESRC), on inequalities in health at older ages (also funded by the ESRC), and on routes into retirement and the impact of retirement on health and well-being (funded by the Nuffield Foundation). I am co-PI of the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (www.ifs.org.uk/elsa ), a multi-disciplinary panel study of those aged 50 and over covering economic position, health and social participation (funded by the US National Institutes of Health and a consortium of UK Government Departments). My work on this involves collaborations with colleagues in the US, Europe and Australia.

 

Current research projects

 

My currently (2009-10) funded projects include:

Selected (recent) publications

 

Books

 

Journal articles

 

 

University of Manchester CCSR