BIOGRAPHY
Kathy Glavanis-Grantham read history at Occidental College, Los Angeles, where she developed an interest in the Middle East as part of her undergraduate curriculum. Pursuing that interest, she undertook postgraduate studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, New Jersey, and completed an MA in 1971.
In order to develop further her Arabic language skills and to deepen her knowledge of the area, she went to the American University in Cairo where she studied the language, literature and culture of the contemporary Arab world, with a particular focus on Egypt. In the second and third years while at AUC, she began to study anthropology and sociology and left to pursue a Ph.D. in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Hull, England in 1974. She returned to Egypt in order to carry out fieldwork in the Nile Delta for two years, looking at the survival strategies of small Egyptian peasant households.
In 1977, she returned to the University of Hull where she began her teaching career, undertaking tutorial work in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She then spent four years at the University of Durham, England, where she worked as a specialist librarian for the Middle East collection, taught in the Department of Anthropology, as well as in the Department of Arabic Studies. In 1982, she undertook a teaching post in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Birzeit University, Palestine. Here she taught a wide range of anthropology and sociology courses, focusing on development issues, particularly rural development, and on the study of gender relations.
While in Palestine, she was a member of a number of development projects that focused on developing collective solutions to socio-economic problems in the context of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. She was also a member of the advisory committee for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Jerusalem. In 1991, she began lecturing in the Department of Sociology, U.C.C. and has acted as one of the co-ordinators for the MA programme in the Sociology of Development and Globalisation since 1992
Research Interests
As is evident from the above, her interests have ranged across a number of disciplines, including history, literature, sociology and anthropology. Much of her earlier study and writing was an attempt to look at literary representations historically and socially. She developed her long term interest in the study of gender relations while at Princeton University where she wrote her MA thesis on the depiction of modern Egyptian women in the short stories of Nagib Mahfuz, who was later to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. While still in Cairo, she first studied urban sociology, but then became interested in rural society, and went on to focus on this area for her Ph.D. research. This field has dominated much of her academic life. She developed an interest in trying to understand the impact of capitalism on peasant societies, and in particular the nature and extent of non-capitalist relations in the reproduction of small peasant households. This required an examination of development policies and the global economy, again, two central concerns of her research over many years. While in Palestine, she pursued these interests in rural society, development and gender relations in this new context, both geographically and politically. She carried out research on the intersection of gender and nationalism in the context of a nation struggling for independence from an occupying power. After moving to Ireland, she developed an interest in the comparative analysis of gender relations within the context of settler colonialism as represented by South Africa and the North of Ireland. She undertook research in the summer of 1995, looking at the intersection of feminism, nationalism, and gender identities in South Africa, interviewing a range of women activists and academics, primarily in the Durban area.
The field of the sociology/anthropology of health is a comparatively recent academic interest for her. During the academic year, 1998/99, while on study leave she began to undertake an investigation into the sociology of the health, and more specifically the sub field of the sociology of death, dying and bereavement. Part of that year was spent in the collection of primary data from Palestine. Out of this research interest she developed a new third year module, The Sociology of Death, Dying and Bereavement, which ran for the first time in the academic year, 2001-02. Likewise, she co-organised with Gearoid O Crualaoich, Department of Folklore and Barra O Donnabhain, Department of Archaeology, U.C.C. an interdisciplinary conference held in November 2001 entitled Death, Dying and Bereavement: Irish Perspectives. Another conference, building on the first, entitled Talking Death: Narratives of Illness and Bereavement was held in October 2004, organised by the same three staff members.
Since October 2002, when she joined Health Action International, an international NGO that promotes rational drug use and consumer interests, she began to embark on research with Orla O'Donovan on the political and cultural influence of the transnational pharmaceutical industry in Ireland. This initial research was presented at the 2nd Population Health Summer School 4-6 September 2003 at UCC (see below). Together with Orla O'Donovan, she organised a conference entitled Health, Democracy and the Globalised Pharmaceutical Industry: Exploring the Politics of Drug Regulation Internationally and in Ireland which took place in September 2004 and which coincided with Health Action International's AGM.
Growing out of her interest in the political and cultural influence of the transnational pharmaceutical industry in Ireland, she has recently embarked on research that examines patient organisations in Ireland.
Research Projects
In October 2004, she embarked with Orla O'Donovan, Department of Applied Social Studies, U.C.C., on a research project entitled "Patient Organisations in Ireland - Challenging Biomedical Discourses and Practices?". This project received a grant of 37,000 euro from the Royal Irish Academy as part of its Third Sector Research Programme. Over the past decade in Ireland, a number of patient organisations have played a crucial role in the questioning of dominant health discourse and in generating public debate about healthcare. However, we know little about the nature of patient organisations in general in Ireland. The extent to which the growth in their numbers is indicative of a vibrant public sphere in which orthodox health discourses and practices are contested remains to be empirically established; this is the central focus of the study. The study has four strands. First, through a review of the literature on patient and health-orientated consumer groups, and third sector organisations more generally, we aim to develop an analytical framework within which Irish patient groups can be situated and understood. Second, we aim to conduct a survey of patient organisations in Ireland to explore the level and nature of their activities, as well as their links to other bodies, particularly drug companies. Through this survey, we aim to establish if patient organisations with different orientations can be identified in the Irish context. This will provide the basis of the third strand of the study, which will aim to develop in-depth case studies of a number of specific patient organisations that reflect these different orientations. The fourth strand of the study considers patient organisation sponsorship by the pharmaceutical industry in Ireland and aims to illuminate its extent and consequences.
Professional Activities
Employment
| Employer | Position | From / To | |
|---|---|---|---|
| School of Sociology, University College Cork | College Lecturer | / |
Teaching Activities
Teaching Interests
During the academic year, 2004-05, she is teaching a module entitled An Introduction to the Sociology of Development to first year Arts, Social Science and Evening BA students. In the second year, she teaches a module entitled Rural Development: A Global Perspective (SC2006) while she teaches two modules to third year students, namely The Sociology of the Middle East (SC3013) and The Sociology of Death, Dying and Bereavement (SC3031), in addition to supervising third year student research projects (SC3015). She also taught for many years The Sociology of Gender module in the department. At the postgraduate level, she teaches a seminar entitled The Sociology of Development and its Alternatives. Outside of the department, she teaches on the Diploma in Development Studies, Department of Adult and Continuing Education. At the postgraduate level, she supervises on the MA in Women's Studies and is currently co-supervising a Ph.D. student in the Department of Occupational Therapies