Lived experience has become a central source of insight and action in health research, particularly through patient and public involvement (PPIE). This seminar engages with this important shift, asking how qualitative sociology contributes not by duplicating experience but by examining the conditions under which it is made meaningful, visible, or actionable.

Cristian Montenegro draws on social systems theory to explore how sociology can enrich participatory research agendas through critical distance, not detachment. He argues that the analytical commitments of sociology and the emancipatory impulse of lived experience are proximal but incongruent, and that this incongruence should be seen as a source of creative tension.

Rather than collapsing these roles, the seminar proposes a dialectical relationship—where engagement and explanation challenge and transform each other. This opens space for sociology to remain both committed and critical, engaged and explanatory, in a rapidly evolving health and mental health research landscape.

How to join this event

This is an online event that is free and open for all to attend. Please register via our Zoom link. 

Speaker biography

Cristian Montenegro is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Global Health at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, KCL. His research explores the social and political dimensions of mental health policy in Latin America and globally, with a focus on human rights and community participation.

He leads a Wellcome Trust-funded project on psychiatric deinstitutionalisation in Chile and Brazil, and has published widely on service-user movements and knowledge production in global mental health.