Who We Are
Professor Celia Lury

Principal Investigator
University of Warwick

Celia is a Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. Her main research contribution is to the development of the interdisciplinary study of culture. Her approach combines studies of cultural change alongside a concern with the implications of such changes for sociality, in particular, understandings of the person, and relations between individuals and groups, addressing issues of inclusion, exclusion and belonging.

Professor Sophie Day

Principal Investigator
Goldsmiths

Sophie is Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has a particular interest in the anthropology of health as a way of thinking about research practices as well as relations of labour and kinship across the life course. Her research is based largely in the U.K. but she continues to work in Ladakh, North India where she did her PhD a long time ago. People Like You builds on her longstanding interests in how persons are conceived, performed, put together and embodied as well as enduring collaborations with Helen Ward (since 1986) and Celia Lury (since 2011).

Professor Helen Ward

Principal Investigator
Imperial College London

Helen trained in medicine at Sheffield University and is now Clinical Professor of Public Health at Imperial College London. She has 3 decades of experience in research, education and applied public health, with an international reputation in the field of the epidemiology and control of sexually transmitted infections and HIV and over 200 publications. She promotes participatory approaches in research, heading the multidisciplinary Imperial NIHR BRC Patient Experience Research Centre (PERC) which leads on public involvement and engagement in research. Helen is also Director of Education for the Imperial School of Public Health, a member of the Supervisory Board of EIT Health and of the ISSTDR.

Helen’s interest in personalisation spans a number of areas. First, understanding how groups are constructed in epidemiological and clinical research using social and biological parameters, and then findings are disaggregated and applied to individual patients. Second, exploring how notions personalised medicine differ between patients, clinicians and scientists. Third, measuring the impact of inequalities in participation – in research, data sharing and access to healthcare.

Dr William Viney

Research Associate
Goldsmiths

William is Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is assisting Professor Sophie Day by exploring changes in personalised healthcare and medicine. His work employs textual, visual and ethnographic methods from the humanities and social sciences to understand the ‘person’ in personalised medicine. Prior to working with the People Like You project he was Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Centre for Medical Humanities and Department of English Studies, University of Durham. He has contributed to publications such as CabinetCritical QuarterlyfriezeThe Palgrave Companion to Biology and Society, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of Twins: Superstitions and Marvels, Fantasises and Experiments (2021) and Waste: A Philosophy of Things (2014). He directed the documentary short, Twins on Twins (2017).

Dr Rozlyn Redd

Research Associate
Imperial College London

Rozlyn Redd is Research Associate in the Department Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on the social processes that underlie the production of categorical inequality and how methods in research produce and alter categories over time. Her PhD Thesis, The Aesthetics of Academic Choice, considers the role of academic interest development and social influence in gender inequality in undergraduate academic major choice. Since finishing her PhD in Sociology at Columbia University, Rozlyn has worked at LSE and University of Leicester. In a previous life she was a political consultant who analysed policy and public opinion in California.

Dr Scott Wark

Research Associate
University of Warwick

Scott is Research Associate at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. His main area of research is online culture: his PhD thesis, ‘Meme Theory’—also at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies—investigates the internet meme as both a form of cultural production and as a form of circulating media that challenges our capacity to theorise it. More broadly, Scott is interested in the politics and (everyday) aesthetics of online cultures and in applying methods, like historical epistemology, to question and extend our media-theoretical practices. He also maintains a research interest in the chemical element lithium, analysing how its psychopharmacological and chemical effects mediate bodies and environments. Scott has also worked in Associate Lecturer roles in media courses at CIM, Warwick; Winchester School of Art; London College of Communication, University of the Arts, London; and The University of Melbourne.

For the People Like You project, he’ll be assisting Professor Celia Lury’s investigations of personalisation in digital culture.

Di Sherlock

Creative Consultant

Di is a writer, poet and actor. For the People Like You project she will be exploring how individuals affected by cancer identify with particular ‘types’. Di will explore ‘likeness’ with patients, carers and practitioners through a residency at Maggie’s Centre West London. Di has worked extensively in theatre, multimedia performance and TV. She now mainly writes and directs. Her work includes Miss Havisham’s Expectations (Trafalgar Studios), Inferno (Birmingham University) based on Jacki Lyden’s memoir of life with her bipolar mother Daughter of the Queen of Sheba and Services No Longer Required for BBC Philharmonic, broadcast live as part of the BBC’s WW1 commemorations. Published poetry includes Come Into The Garden, a cycle of poems chronicling her journey with her late parents through cancer and dementia (live broadcast with specially commissioned solo cello for BBC North), The Memory Poems, inspired by conversations with people living with Alzheimer’s for Westminster Arts, and Written Portraits for the Diep-Haven Festival (translated into French). She is currently developing an opera about the impact of digital tech on our relationships.

Stefanie Posavec

Creative Consultant

Stefanie Posavec is a designer, artist, and author whose practice focuses on finding new approaches for the communication of data and information. Her work has been exhibited internationally at major galleries including the V&A, the Design Museum, and the Wellcome Collection (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), and MoMA (New York). Her work is also in the permanent collection of MoMA. Besides her new illustrated all-ages book I am a book. I am a portal to the universe. (co-authored with Miriam Quick), she has also co-authored two books that emphasise a handmade, personal approach to data: Dear Data and the journal Observe, Collect, Draw!

For the People Like You project she will use her art practice to research how the various stakeholders in a biobank perceive the ‘people behind the numbers’ who consent to their biological samples and data being used and stored for research. This research will inform the creation of a data-driven artwork aiming to communicate these insights to a wider audience.

Dr Felicity Allen

Creative Consultant

Felicity is an artist, writer and educator. Since 2009 she has been making distinct series of Dialogic Portraits (through painting, talk, text and video), including with Refugee Tales (activist-walking-writing) and currently with the cross-disciplinary research project People Like You. With Althea Greenan she is making work for the exhibition Dark Energyin Vienna, 2019 which builds on their exhibition at Limbo, Margate (March 2018), Slidewalking to The Disoeuvre. At Ex Libris gallery, Newcastle (April 2018) George Vasey curated her solo show, The Disoeuvre and an image-text series exploring Allen’s concept of The Disoeuvre will be published by the journal Visual Resources in 2018. She recently produced Eleven Impediments, a video by two artists, one living in London, the other in Damascus (both anonymous for safety reasons).

Dr Yael Gerson

Project Manager
Goldsmiths

Yael is the project coordinator for People Like You, based in the Anthropology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. Yael will be coordinating the research and administrative aspects of the project. Since completing her PhD in Sociology at Goldsmiths, she has worked as a freelance researcher for Smoothmedia working on changes brought through emerging technologies. More recently she has completed a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant looking at the impact of the Zapatista movement on indigenous feminism.