Dr Tanisha Spratt

• Lecturer in Sociology
• Undergraduate Tutor

• Editorial Board Member – Sociology of Health & Illness
• Network member – Black Health & Humanities (Wellcome-funded)
• Collaborator – Shame and Medicine (Wellcome-funded)
• Member of the British Sociological Association (BSA)

Tanisha’s research centres on the relationship between self-presentation, neoliberalism and health outcomes amongst marginalised groups. Tanisha’s research particularly focuses on the role of neoliberalism in promoting and sustaining understandings of personal responsibility, deservedness and grievability when it comes to health and illness.

Tanisha welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students whose research considers:

• Neoliberalism, self-presentation and health
• Racial inequalities in health
• Colourism, racism and critical race theory
• Experiences of invisibility/ hypervisibility in medical settings
• Fat shaming, stigma and inequality
• Grievability, biopolitics and health

Key funded projects

(2021-2022) ‘Exploring COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Minority Ethnic Groups: A Qualitative Study in UK Primary Care’ – Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. £3,968.

(2018-2019) ‘International Black Radicalism Research Group, University of Cambridge’ – Centre for  Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). £1,500.

(2015-2019) ‘Social (In)Visibility and Disease Performativity: Qualitative Insights from Two US Case Studies’ – Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). £68,500.

Spratt, Tanisha, ‘Understanding Experiences of Weight-Related Shame in Clinical Experience’ (2021), Shame and Medicine, https://shameandmedicine.org/understanding-experiences-of- weight-related-shame-in-clinical-practice/.

Spratt, Tanisha; Aveyard, Paul; Jebb, Susan, ‘When Public Health Met Body Positivity: Reactions to CRUK’s Obesity Campaign’ (2020), The BMJ Opinion, https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2020/02/05/when-public-health-met-body-positivity-reactions- to-cruks-obesity-campaign/.

Spratt, Tanisha, ‘Body Positivity vs. Medical “Truths”’: Obesity and the Cultural Production of Shame’ (2020), BMJ Medical Humanities, https://blogs.bmj.com/medical- humanities/2020/09/10/body-positivity-vs-medical-truths-obesity-and-the-cultural- production-of-shame/

Journal articles

Dolezal, Luna and Spratt, Tanisha. ‘Fat Shaming Under Neoliberalism and COVID-19: Examining the UK’s Tackling Obesity Campaign’ (2022) Sociology of Health & Illness [online first] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-9566.13555.

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose. ‘Reconceptualising Judith Butler’s Theory of “Grievability” in Relation to the UK’s “War on Obesity:” Personal Responsibility, Biopolitics and Disposability,’ (2022) The Sociological Review, 70(3), pp. 474-488.

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose. ‘Understanding “Fat Shaming” in a Neoliberal Era: Performativity, Healthism, and the UK’s “Obesity Epidemic”,’ (2021) Feminist Theory [online first] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14647001211048300.

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose, ‘Rethinking Patient Inequality: Stress, Resilience and Personal Responsibility’ (2020), Sheffield Student Journal of Sociology, https://sheffieldsociologyjournal.weebly.com/uploads/7/5/8/6/75863981/tanisha_spratt.pdf.

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose. ‘Passing Strategies and Performative Identities: Coping with (In)Visible Chronic Diseases’ (2019), Journal of Medical Humanities, 43, pp. 73-88.

Book reviews

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose, (2021) Meghji, Ali. Decolonizing Sociology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity Press. 2021. The Sociological Review, [online first: https://thesociologicalreview.org/reviews/decolonizing-sociology-by-ali-meghji/].

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose, (2021) de Wet, Katinka. The Normalization of the HIV and AIDS Epidemic in South Africa. London: Routledge. 2019. Sociology of Health & Illness, [online first: https:// 10.1111/1467-9566.13345].

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose, (2020) HoSang, Daniel Martinez and Lowndes, Joseph E. Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2019. Sociology of Health & Illness, 42(6), pp. 1488-1489.

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose, (2019) Hill, S. A. Inequalities and African-American Health: How Racial Disparities Create Sickness. Bristol: Policy Press. 2016. Sociology of Health & Illness, 42(2), pp. 425-426.

Spratt, Tanisha Jemma Rose, (2018) Ehlers, N. and Hinkson, L.R. (eds) Subprime Health: Debt and Race in U.S. Medicine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2017. Sociology of Health & Illness, 40(7), pp. 1268-1269.

• (2021) ‘Race in the Round: Reflecting on Contemporary Sociologies of Race, Health and Biomedicine in the UK’ (BSA MedSoc Conference, virtual event).
• (2020) ‘Understanding “Fat Shaming” in a Neoliberal Era: Exploring Reactions to CRUK’s Anti-Obesity Campaign’ (BSA Annual Conference, Aston University, Birmingham).
• (2018) ‘Seeing’ vs. ‘Looking:’ Narratives of Vulnerabilty, Precarity and Stigma in US Patients with Visible and Invisible Chronic Conditions’ (ESHMS: 17^th Biennial Conference, Lisbon, Portugal).
• (2017) ‘Visualising Illness: Body Consciousness and Social Passing in US AKU Patients and Vitiligo Subjects’ (BSA MedSoc Conference, University of York, UK).