Stefan Timmermans

My research draws from medical sociology and science studies to address hot-button issues in the for-profit U.S. health system from the perspective of people experiencing health care. I have conducted research on medical technologies, genomics, health professions, death and dying, standardization, evidence-based medicine, patient-doctor interaction, and population health. My goal is to conduct robust qualitative research that reveals the social processes producing inequities in the U.S. health care system. 

My recently wrapped up research project is a study with Pamela J. Prickett of unclaimed dead. We investigate the twists and turns of their lives, their abandonment at death, the workers charged with tending their bodies, and the strangers who show up to mourn them. The book questions what we owe each other at death. How much did your life matter if no one cares when you die?

We wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about the unclaimed dead in Los Angeles. We are working on a general audience, narrative nonfiction book to be published by Crown and we have articles about this project published in the British Journal of Sociology and in the American Sociological Review.

My new research project is an ethnographic study of social support during heart transplants.