Professor Nikolas Rose
Department Director
Contact: nikolas.rose@kcl.ac.uk
Professor Rose is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Social Science, Health and Medicine. He originally trained as a biologist before switching to psychology and then to sociology. After ten years at Goldsmiths College, where he was Head of Sociology and Pro-Warden for Research, he joined the London School of Economics in 2002 and was Convenor of the Department of Sociology from 2002 to 2006 and Martin White Professor of Sociology. He founded the BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society at LSE, and was its Director since its inception in 2003.
Professor Rose has published widely on the social and political history of the human sciences, on the genealogy of subjectivity, on the history of empirical thought in sociology, on law and criminology, and on changing rationalities and techniques of political power.
For the last decade, his work has focussed on the conceptual, social and political dimensions of the contemporary life sciences and biomedicine. His current research concerns biological and genetic psychiatry and behavioural neuroscience; his study of the social implications of the rise of the new brain sciences will be published by Princeton University Press in 2012 as Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind.
His most recent books include Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1999), The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2006) and (with Peter Miller) Governing the Present. ). He is a longstanding member of the Editorial Board of Economy and Society and co-editor of BioSocieties: an interdisciplinary journal for social studies of the life sciences.
Professor Rose is a member of several advisory groups including the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, and has recently worked closely with the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is Chair of the European Neuroscience and Society Network, a unique interdisciplinary collaboration of social scientists, philosophers, lawyers, neuroscientists and psychiatrists.
The new Department of Social Science, Health & Medicine, located in the School of Social Science and Public Policy, will confirm King’s as a world leader in social scientific approaches to health and medicine, with innovative research and research-led teaching (at both taught postgraduate and doctoral levels) as the basis for a significant input into global health policy. A flagship interdisciplinary undergraduate programme, the BSc Global Health & Social Medicine will launch from September 2014.. The Department’s research in social science, health and medicine will be placed in a global context focusing in particular on the social determinants of inequalities in health and disease.