Dr Heidi Bickis

As a member of the Evidence Informed Practice of Medicine (EIPOM) teaching team, Heidi teaches sociology of health and illness to medical and physician associate students as part of the MBBS, MPAP, and MPAS courses. She is also lead for UM2020, a second-year module on the MBBS.

Heidi completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada before moving to the UK in 2016. She has over ten years of experience teaching in both higher and further education. Prior to joining us in November 2021, she taught sociology at several Canadian universities and A-level sociology at several UK colleges. She also worked as a lecturer in Contextualising Practice in the School of Art and Performance at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Heidi’s research interests are interdisciplinary. They encompass a range of subjects and topics including the body and embodiment, health and medicine, social and cultural theory, and contemporary art. Currently, she is working on a project examining ideas about fatigue, tiredness, and bodily energies. This is through a sociological lens on illness, medical, wellbeing, and work-related discourses. Some of this work formed the basis of a chapter in Seasonal Sociology, an award-winning introductory sociology textbook published by University of Toronto Press in 2020. The chapter introduces students to sociological approaches to the body. It offers an analysis of the ways rest and work are structured during holiday periods.

In earlier work, Heidi focused on contemporary art and examined how artists and their artistic explorations contribute to sociological thinking and analyses with a particular focus on the body and embodiment. She specialised in the work of French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard. She made a significant contribution to research in this area by organising an international conference and co-editing an edited collection: Rereading Jean-François Lyotard: Essays on his Later Works (Ashgate, 2013). She has also published work in Thesis Eleven, Space and Culture Journal, the Canadian Theatre Review, and Traversals of Affect (Bloomsbury, 2016), an edited collection on Lyotard and affect. As a member of the BeSST committee, Heidi is involved in developing and promoting sociology and other social sciences in medical education.