Conor Douglas PhD., MSc., BA.

Conor joined the Rathenau Instituut as a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the fall of 2010, and is working alongside Dr. Dirk Stemerding (and other European colleagues) on the Synthetic Biology for Human Health: Ethical and Legal Issues (or SYHBEL http://sybhel.org/ ) project that is a part of the EU’s FP7 Science and Society stream.

Career and Education
Alongside his work with the TA team Conor is also taking up a Post-Doc position at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam’s Medical Centre in the section Community Genetics (http://www.emgo.nl/home/ ). There he will work on a project funded by the  Centre for Society and Genomics (http://www.society-genomics.nl/en/home.html ) on user configuration in Dutch bio-banking.

Prior to these posts Conor was a Post-Doctoral Researcher Fellow (2008-2010) at the University of British Columbia, in his native home of Vancouver. There he worked in Dr. Janet Atkinson-Grosjean’s Translational Genomics Research Group ( www.tgrg-ubc.org/#  ) , whose projects explored the factors that facilitate and constrain translational science (in both the pathogenomics of innate immunity project (PI2), as well as the mining and metagenomics project funded by Genome Canada and Genome BC respectively).

Conor also spent three and a half years as a Research Fellow in the Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU) at the University of York (UK) where he undertook his PhD (on patient participation in medical R&D: the case of pharmocogenetics) under the direction of Prof. Andrew Webster (2005-2009). His time in the UK was preceded by an MSc in science and technology studies (Honors) at the University of Amsterdam (2003-2004) where he worked under the tutelage of Dr. Olga Amsterdamska and Dr. Annemiek Nelis, and a BA in sociology (Honors) and political science (Major) at the University of Victoria (1997-2002) under the supervision of Dr. Ken Hatt.

Specialization & Professional Interests:
Conor’s interest are located broadly within the field of science and technology studies (STS), and more specifically in the interactions and co-production between biomedical sciences and society (and  ‘users’ in particular). These interests have culminated in the examination of patient and public involvement in the biomedical innovation processes, and the role of social sciences in multidisciplinary medical research. 

Conor has also long been interested and involved in the development of skills and capacities necessary for undertaking research at the intersection of biomedical science and society. This has lead to building in the area of genetics and society ( www.pfgs.org ), which links into teaching interests.