Dr Sonja Erikainen

Biography

Sonja (Sone) Erikainen joined the University of Aberdeen Sociology Department in 2022 as a Lecturer in Sociology.

They completed their PhD in Sociology at the University of Leeds in 2017, after gaining an MSc in Gender Research at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MA (hons) in Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. Prior to taking up their current post, they held three different research fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Leeds. Their research focuses on the science-society intersection and examines social and cultural issues around biomedicine and health, scientific knowledge production, sports, gender diversity and sex difference.   

Research Overview

My research focuses on the science-society intersection, and aims to understand the social implications of the changing relationship between science and wider society and culture. I am especially interested in social and cultural issues around biomedical knowledge production and the uses of scientific knowledge in the construction of social categories. Driven by this wider theoretical interest, my research concentrates on two different but overlapping areas: new and emerging biotechnologies and new approaches to medical research, and gender diversity and sex difference.        

Within new and emerging biotechnologies and approaches to medical research, I am especially interested in questions around how these technologies and approaches are changing the meaning and practices of medicine and healthcare as well as how they are changing what it means to be a patient. Much of my work in this area has examined especially the implications of digital health technologies, citizen science and participatory public engagement initiatives on medical knowledge production, healthcare delivery, and the roles and experiences of patienthood.

My research around gender diversity and sex difference focuses on trans and non-binary identities and bodies as well as on intersex and diverse sex development especially in the sphere of sports but also within wider culture and social life. I am most interested in social and cultural issues around the sex binary and the sex / gender distinction, and how these binaries and distinctions are socially and scientifically constituted, applied, and disrupted, including in social spheres that tend to rely on strict sex and gender divisions, such as sports. My work has especially examined historical and contemporary sex and gender categories in both elite and community sports, social and cultural issues around the science of sex difference, and the uses of biomedical science in sports governance in relation to trans, non-binary, intersex and diverse sex development.