Josephine T. V. Greenbrook
Researcher
School of Public Health and Community MedicineAbout Josephine T. V. Greenbrook
Background Josephine T. V. Greenbrook is an interdisciplinary researcher; having originally founded roots in humanistic clinical psychology and transcultural psychiatry - before turning to medical sociology - and continuing on to medical law, medical ethics, global health bioethics, and migration medicine. Her doctoral research in medical law brought together the fields of migration medicine, the sociology of law, medical ethics, and anthropological theory of liminality and liminal space. Her work continues to be both inherently interdisciplinary, and her research and teaching cover a broad spectrum of the medical humanities and social sciences, and medical education.
Qualifications
- MSc Mental Health Psychology (University of Liverpool)
- LLM Medical Law and Ethics (University of Edinburgh)
- MSc Sociology (University of Gothenburg)
- MEd Teaching in Higher Education (Dissertating - University of Gothenburg)
- PhD in Medical Law (University of Edinburgh)
Responsibilities & Affiliations Josephine currently serves as the co-chair for the interdisciplinary research platform Borders in Health, Medicine, and Society (together with Mayssa Rekhis) at Sahlgrenska Academy, and is an accredited lecturer in migration medicine, healthcare research methods, research ethics and regulation, medical ethics and bioethics, medical jurisprudence and human rights in medicine, transcultural psychiatry, clinical empathy, and medical sociology.
Josephine is currently also Deputy Director of the Mason Institute for Medicine Life Sciences and the Law, at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh. Additionally, she serves as an external expert consultant in empirical methods, as well as in research ethics and regulation, and humanitarian global health biothics on multiple international research projects. Further, she is active in forwarding empirical findings in applied settings, engaging with the public both in medicine, healthcare, and the humanitarian sector. Other current research affiliations also include the Department of General Psychiatry at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
Josephine is also the founder and chair of Thriving in Academia, an an inclusive virtual community seeking to decolonise academia through the countering of epistemic injustice in academic spaces and supporting a thriving diversity of voices across disciplines.
Research Summary Areas of research include migration medicine (primarily undocumented migration), physicians' pathway development, medical jurisprudence, human rights in medicine, culture in psychiatry, medical ethics and bioethics, clinical empathy, sexual and reproductive health rights, medical sociology, global health emergencies, the decolonisation of research ethics and methodologies in health and medical research, and xenophobia, racism, and discrimination in medical education.
Physicians have been a focal point throughout Josephine's work, exploring their lived experiences throughout their careers, in a variety of stages, contexts, and cases. Her research has advanced knowledge on how context and structure influence physicians' behaviour in everyday praxis, through the theoretical lenses of the lived experience of law and liminality in medical praxis, alienation and anomie in modern medicine, and professional (and personal) identity development among psychiatrists. Her research also explores broadened descriptions of health and illness in the context of undocumented migration and among unaccompanied minors; focusing on lived experiences, and intersections with healthcare institutions and healthcare professionals. Further, she is involved in multiple research projects covering global health, where she focuses on structural and systemic violence and its impact on health, sexual reproductive health rights, gender equality, mental health, and the decolonisation of research ethics and methodologies. Past research project have covered humanistic psychology and pluralistic psychotherapy, social movements in health, person-centered medicine, psychometrics, and the psychosocial weight of stillbirth.
Current Research Projects Josephine is PI for The Boundaries Longitudinal Study, an interdisciplinary study funded by the Swedish Research Council and the University of Edinburgh, and conducted with Mayssa Rekhis, Lisen Dellenborg, Andrea Spehar, and Lena Gross. The project explores physicians' responses to government initiatives to legislate the mandatory reporting of undocumented patients. The study takes a broadened ethnographic method, following emerging phenomena over a ten year period, through qualitative interviews conducted in various contexts within the healthcare system and medical education, participant observations conducted in medical humanitarianism and in civil society contexts engaged in the issue of mandatory reporting, and media analyses of ongoing discourses and debates at a societal level. Josephine is also Co-Investigator in HERSUM, together with My Opperdoes, Lisen Dellenborg, Gunilla Backman, and Henry Ascher. This interdisciplinary study, funded by FORTE and VGR, investigates the lived experiences of forcibly displaced unaccompanied minor girls' sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), as well as their transition into young adulthood, through the lens of intersectionality and gender-based violence. Further she is leading the methodology of a study together with Elisabet Lönnermark, illuminating medical students' feelings of powerlessness in the face of racism in medical education and clinical placements.