Professor Susan Fairley Murray

Susan is Emeritus Professor of Health, Society and Development. She is a social scientist working at the interface of Sociology, Public Health and International Development Studies. An original member of King’s International Development Institute, she was the first Head of the Department of International Development in the School of Global Affairs from 2017-2020.

After reading sociology and politics at the University of Edinburgh, Susan trained and worked in healthcare in the UK and Nicaragua. She then returned to an academic career, with posts at the University of Edinburgh, the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital (University College London) and King’s College London.

She holds a PhD in Social Policy from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has been a visiting scholar at the LSE and at the Facultad de Ciencias Sociales e Historia, Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile. She also has a longstanding collaboration with colleagues at the Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

Research

Susan's research examines how health systems can generate or prevent health and wider social goals.

Over her career she has addressed questions related to poverty and access to healthcare, the social organisation of healthcare, and maternal and reproductive health policy, the financialisation of healthcare, and globalisation and the healthcare economy.

Currently she is writing a volume exploring the commercialisation of health insurance for CUP, and she leads an ESRC-supported project exploring engagements between England’s NHS and emerging economies in transnational healthcare provisioning.

Further details

See Susan's research profile