Emma Whelan

Cross appointment

• Gender and Women's Studies  

Education

• BA Hons, University of Winnipeg
• MA, Queen's University
• PhD, Carleton University
• PDF, McGill University
  

Research interests

Emma Whelan is a sociologist whose research is concerned with problems of knowledge and moral regulation in health, illness, and health care. Her work addresses several questions:  How do we know (or think we know) about health and illness? How do people draw on moral and epistemic arguments to make claims about health, illness, and health care? How are authority over health and responsibility for health assigned? And how do competing stakeholders in the health arena struggle for power and credibility?

Dr. Whelan works with graduate students in several areas:  critical analyses of health, illness, and medicine; social studies of knowledge, professions, and disciplines; science and technology studies; qualitative methods; risk, surveillance, and moral regulation; social theory; gender and sexuality. She has particular interests in the social epistemology of pain, reproductive and sexual health, historical sociology of hygiene and public health, classification and standardization practices in medicine, and the expert-lay divide. Past research has explored the knowledge politics of endometriosis, pain treatment in the wake of the OxyContin crisis, and the evolution of the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. She is currently working on the history of moral regulation and responsibilisation in hand washing campaigns. She also has an interest in the sociology of post-secondary education, particularly in the areas of class-based inequity, accommodations, and student mental health.

Selected publications

• Whelan, E. (Published online, 2018). Working up a lather: the rise (and fall?) of hand hygiene in Canadian newspapers, 1986–2015. Critical Public Health, 1-15. doi:10.1080/09581596.2018.1453126.
• Whelan, E. (2018). Committing Sociology:  In praise of value-interrogating sociology. Canadian Review of Sociology 55(2), 322-324. doi:10.1111/cars.12203
• Waterfield, B., & Whelan, E. (2017). Learning disabled students and access to accommodations: socioeconomic status, capital, and stigma. Disability & Society, 32(7), 986-1006. doi:10.1080/09687599.2017.1331838.
• Whelan, E. & Asbridge, M. (2013). The OxyContin crisis: Problematisation and responsibilisation strategies in addiction, pain, and general medicine journals. International Journal of Drug Policy, 24, 402-411. doi:10.1016/j.drugpo.2013.01.007.
• Whelan, E. (2009). Negotiating science and experience in medical knowledge: Gynaecologists on endometriosis. Social Science & Medicine, 68(8), 1489-1497. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2009.01.032.
• Whelan, E. (2009). How Classification Works, Or Doesn’t: The Case of Chronic Pain. In David Byrne and Charles C. Ragin (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Case Based Methods (pp. 169-182). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
• Whelan, E. (2007). 'No one agrees except for those of us who have it’: Endometriosis Patients as an Epistemological Community. Sociology of Health & Illness 29(7), 957-982. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2007.01024.x.