John Abraham is a Professor of Sociology currently based at the Universities of Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) in southeast England. First appointed as a Full Professor over a quarter of a century ago, he has been Full Professor of Sociology at King’s College London for about a decade since 2013, having previously been appointed to a Personal Chair and Full Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex in the late 1990s after being promoted to a Reader (senior Associate Professor) in Sociology at the University of Reading in 1995. He was born in the 1960s in County Armagh and grew up during the intense military conflict in the North of Ireland where he attended a large comprehensive school. As bombs exploded and bullets flew, opportunities for social life were curtailed, so he turned to chess, poker, and studying, including 5 ‘A’ levels. By age 15, he was mid-Ulster chess champion and, having started poker at age 9, decades later he retains a success-rate (in-person only) of over 90% (though he does not encourage gambling). Leaving northern Ireland immediately after school to study at the relative tranquillity of the University of Sussex, John initially trained as a mathematician and worked with the Radical Statistics Group of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science. Subsequently, he switched to the humanities and social sciences with an M.Sc. in History and Social Studies of Science/Science Policy Studies, an M.A. in Sociology, and a D.Phil in Politics – all from the University of Sussex. Later in his twenties, he co-founded the WWF-funded Education Network for Global Environment and Development.
John has published (and taught) widely across fields in sociology including: pharmaceuticals & society; science, technology & society (STS); medical sociology; sociology of education; political economy of food; public sociology of global environment and development; and mathematics & society (see ‘Research Fields’). This comprises numerous books and many hundreds of articles, papers, and presentations/lectures. Probably best known for his research on pharmaceuticals and public health policy, John is widely acknowledged as founder of the field ‘Pharmaceuticals & Society’ within sociology/social sciences – a field that did not exist when he began working on it in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, he has run the world’s largest and most sustained social science research programme in the field of pharmaceuticals & society. His 1995 book, Science, Politics and the Pharmaceutical Industry was the first major STS publication in the field, which he reinforced with four subsequent books together with continuous teaching of undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral students in ‘Pharmaceuticals & Society’, Sociology of Medicines & Health, and ‘Medicines, Health & Development’ from 1995 to the present. Subsequently, he was founding Director of the ESRC-funded Excellence Centre for Research in Health and Medicine (CRHaM) from 1999-2012 at University of Sussex.
From 1993, John has held over a dozen international Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Welcome Trust funded research projects, usually as sole applicant and Principal Investigator, on various aspects of pharmaceuticals & society. In recognition of his continual and successful management of so many ESRC projects, John was appointed a member of the UK ESRC Research Grants Committee from 2007-2009 and then Chair of the ESRC’s main social science Research Grants Panel from 2009-2014. During that time, he reviewed and guided decision-making on hundreds of UK social science research grant proposals. Meanwhile, as the UK’s leading social scientist on pharmaceutical policy, John was appointed Special Expert Adviser to the UK House of Commons Parliamentary Health Select Committee. He was centrally involved in its eight-month ‘Inquiry into the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry’ (2004-2005). This was the most comprehensive and wide-ranging Parliamentary investigation of the pharmaceutical sector since 1914. More recently, he presented evidence to the 2020 Baroness Cumberlege Independent Inquiry on the Review of Medicines and Medical Device Safety. In an attempt to improve public health, especially in relation to pharmaceuticals in society, he has delivered many public lectures to legislative bodies (including the UK Houses of Parliament), the World Health Organization, the British Medical Association, Royal College of Psychiatrists, International Society for Pharmacovigilance, European Science Foundation, Society of Legal Scholars, drug regulatory agencies, European Commission, European Congress of Toxicology, Royal College of Surgeons, International Society of Social Pharmacy, International Health Technology Assessment Association, European Public Health Alliance, and Health Action International, among many others. John also regularly works with television and radio documentary-makers, film producers, global law firms, and journalists from print, radio and television news outlets about high-profile pharmaceutical cases.
When not working, John indulges in playing high-level chess and poker, interspersed with a healthy dose of badminton and table-tennis to keep fit.