Sleep and Society: Sociological Ventures into the Un

by Simon J. Williams

Exploring the sociological aspects of sleep and their links to current health debates, this unique text discusses why sleep has been so neglected in sociological literature and examines significant modern issues such Written by a key international figure in medical sociology, this is the first sociological examination of sleep, making it important reading for academics and advanced students of medical sociology, health studies, and sociology, as well as for professionals and policy makers involved in the area.

198 pages, Hardcover

First published August 9, 2005

About the author

Simon Johnson Williams joined the Department of Sociology at Warwick in 1992, becoming a full Professor in 2006. Prior to that he was a Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS) at the University of Kent (1990-1992) after successfully completing his doctoral studies at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, in 1990.

Simon is a passionate teacher and researcher with strong conviction in the enduring power and promise of the social and political sciences in a complex, changing world. He is also strongly committed to interdisciplinary conversations, particularly those of a biosocial and biopolitical kind, and to wider engagements with diverse audiences and publics, including media profiling of his work.

Simon has served on the editorial boards of a number of key international journals in his field (such as Sociology of Health & Illness; Health; Social Theory & Health). He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Simon's research to date falls into the following interrelated areas of social and political science pertaining to: the body, health and society; bioscience, biomedicine, biopolitics; (new) media, culture and everyday/night life, including new digital forms of self-tracking and the sharing of such data on social media, particularly sleep data. He also has longstanding interests in social theory (particularly realist social theory, relational sociology, psychoanalytically informed social theory, and biologically minded social theory) and newly emerging interests in the challenges and complexities of big data.

He has been notably active in recent years, as an outgrowth of his previous interests in body matters, in developing with colleagues social and interdisciplinary research agendas regarding sleep and society, including an early agenda-setting ESRC 'Sleep and Society' seminar series and other recent discussions and reflections on sleep matters and the politics of sleep in Somatosphere, the RSA journal and Discover Society. This in turn has been augmented through other interrelated strands of research (some early, others now well established) on the sociology and politics of pharmaceuticals; mental health and illness; biomedical enhancements and 'biohacking'; new forms of monitoring, measuring, managing and optimising ourselves in the digital age and the big data era, and most recently of all, the social, cultural and political dimensions of chronobiology in society.

Research awards to date include grants (as PI or CI) from funding bodies such as the ESRC, the British Academy and the NHS Executive, as well as the co-supervision of a number of successfully completed ESRC doctoral studentships and a co-funded Warwick-Coeliac UK studentship. Recent projects for example, include a collaborative (Royal Holloway, Warwick, King's College London) ESRC funded study of Medicated Sleep and Wakefulnes: A Social Scienfitic Investigation of Stakeholder Interests, Policies and Practices and a Wellcome seed fund project (with colleagues at Surrey and Royal Holloway) on 'Social Media and Sleep: Ethical Agendas in the Digital Age' which has just ended. Other new collaborative research bids are currently in the early stages of discussion and development on (i) Chronobiology in Society and (ii) Sleep and Transhumanism.