Helen Busby

ESRC Research Fellow

CONTACT DETAILS

Department of Health Sciences
University of Leicester
22-28 Princess Road West
Leicester LE1 6TP

Tel: 00 44 116 252 3648

Email: hwb1@le.ac.uk     

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

My core interests are at the interface of bioethics, social science, and biomedicine. My empirical research over recent years has focused on issues of consent, ethics, and governance in research, especially in relation to blood and bio banking.

I joined the SAPPHIRE Group in January 2011, having undertaken doctoral and postdoctoral research at University of Nottingham, where I was Wellcome Trust Fellow in biomedical ethics and Senior Research Fellow. Previously I was Research Fellow at the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre, undertaking qualitative research within multidisciplinary studies about health care, need and demand.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Risk, safety and consent in contemporary blood services in the United Kingdom: perspectives from sociology and law. Busby H, Kent J and Farrell A. Economic and Social Science Research Council. 2011 – 2013.

This  project aims to explore how people frame risk and safety in blood services in the UK. The project is funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council, and involves collaboration between Dr Helen Busby at the University of Leicester, Professor Julie Kent at the University of the West of England, and Dr Anne-Maree Farrell at  Monash University (Australia). The aims are to provide a sociologically informed analysis of public understandings, professional practice, public policy, and law in relation to risks in the supply of blood products in the UK.  The researchers will undertake innovative qualitative research about how patients, professionals, and regulators approach important questions about risk when thinking about treatments with blood products. 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES / MEMBERSHIP

• Independent expert for the European Commission (Ethics Sector: DG Research and Innovation).
• Member, British Sociological Association (BSA) and BSA Medical Sociology group.
• Member, Royal Anthropological Institute.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

1. Busby H, Kent J, Farrell AM.(2013) Revaluing donor and recipient bodies in the globalised blood economy: Transitions in public policy on blood safety in the United Kingdom.  This paper is published in Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 2013 by Sage Publications Ltd
2. Mohr A, Busby H, Hervey T, Dingwall R. (2012) Mapping the role of official bioethics advice in the governance of biotechnologies in the EU: The European Group on Ethics’ Opinion on commercial cord blood banking. Science and Public Policy 39 (1): 105-117.
3. Busby, H. (2010) The meanings of consent to the donation of cord blood stem cells: perspectives from an interview based study of a public cord blood bank in England. Clinical Ethics, 5, 1: 22-27.
4. Busby, H. (2010) Trust, nostalgia and narrative accounts of blood banking in England in the twenty first century. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health Illness and Medicine. Sage 14, 4: 364-382.
5. Duffy, T. Querol, S. Dennes, W. Taario, M. Mason, K. Busby, H. Okeke, W. Goldman, J. Madrigal, JA. Mufti, GJ. Pagliuca, A. Yiannouzis, K/ (2009) The Kingscord model: a public cord blood collection service. British Journal of Midwifery, 17:306-13.
6. Busby, H. Hervey, T. and Mohr, A. (2008) Ethical EU law? The influence of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies. European Law Review, 33, 803-842. (This paper, published in 'European Law Review', volume 33, number 6, page 803-841 , is reproduced here by permission of the publisher Sweet & Maxwell.)
7. Busby, H. (2006) Biobanks, bioethics and concepts of donated blood in the UK. Sociology of Health and Illness, 28, 6: 850-865.
8. Busby, H. (2006) Consent, trust and ethics: reflections on the findings of an interview based study with people donating blood for genetic research for research within the NHS. Clinical Ethics, 1: 211-215.
9. Busby, H. and Martin, P. (2006) National Biobanks and Imagined Communities: UK Biobank and the appeal to national identity. Science as Culture, 15, 3: 237-251.
10. Busby, H. (2004) Blood donation for genetic research: What can we learn from donors’ narratives? In R Tutton and O. Corrigan (Eds.) Genetic databases: Socio-ethical issues in the collection and use of DNA, London: Routledge: 39-56.
11. Busby, H. (2000) Writing about health and sickness: an analysis of contemporary autobiographical writing from the Mass-Observation Archive. Sociological Research Online, 3, 2.
12. Busby, H. Williams, G. and Rogers, A. (1997) A Bodies of knowledge: lay and biomedical understandings of musculoskeletal disorders. In M. Elston (Ed.) The Sociology of medical science. Sociology of Health and Illness monograph series, 3, 79-99.