Overview

Maria is a Research Fellow working for the SPOCC project- SPOtting Cancer among Comorbidities (NIHR)- WP2: " Help us to spot cancer early: an interview study to explore your experiences".

Maria has a PhD in Sociology of Health and Illness and she is mainly interested in the process of diagnosis and how social representations of gender, age and mental health are responsible for misdiagnosis and or late diagnosis of various conditions. She has a strong background in qualitative research and analysis, and she has an in-depth understanding of social processes and their impact on individuals’ discourses, lives and daily practices. She has worked in the field of Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease and cancer diagnosis for people with co/multimorbidities (SPOCC project).

She is primarily interested in research areas related to social processes such as psychologisation and its impact on medicine, the process of diagnosis under a sociological and anthropological perspective and qualitative research. Specifically, she is interested in uncovering the links between psychological knowledge and medical practices, ergo how the first is used un-consciously to shape attributions and interpretations of embodied experiences and symptoms under patients’ and health professionals’ perspectives.

Qualifications

• BSc Political Science and Public Administration (2012)
• MSc Political Psychology (2013)
• PhD Sociology of Health and Illness (2020)