Patrice Wright
Postdoctoral Fellow
My interest in healthcare inequalities stems in part from my own experiences as both a patient and as a daughter of a medical professional. Medicine, in the abstract, is a helping-profession where people are trained healers who use objective science to care for the sick. Yet, patients do not always experience healthcare in this way. As a medical sociologist, I explore healthcare interactions for the ways that inequality seeps in and effects meaning-making and experience. In my teaching, I strive to do the same thing with students: take a set of generally understood ideas and turn them on their heads. I want my research and teaching to encourage students to think critically about their social worlds.