About the lecture
Eating disorders are stereotypically thought to affect white, middle-class girls, preoccupied with their appearance.
Drawing on her long-term research in this area, Professor Saukko will outline how this conventional diagnostic idea influences lived experiences, public understanding and treatment of eating disorders.
Using the notion of “diagnostic overshadowing” – which focuses on a patient’s main diagnosis, bypassing other important considerations – she will explore what issues this approach highlights and what it silences.
She will discuss how typical diagnostic notions critically interrogate gendered, social expectations affecting women – but also frame them as easily influenced and vain, overlooking other important issues, such as personal and social trauma as well as neurodivergence.
This will lead to an overview of how research into social media and eating disorders has often focused on its detrimental effects on body image, but not necessarily illuminated contradictory, creative and even helpful use of social media.
Finally, she will introduce a new project that is investigating the problem of viewing people with eating disorders as rigid, manipulative and hard-to-treat.
She will highlight how this attitude can lead to inpatient service users not been listened to, healthcare staff becoming exhausted and the care setting perceived as conflictual and futile.
Closing on a positive note, she will present some ideas for moving towards more collaborative and compassionate care.
About the lecturer
Professor Paula Saukko’s research explores the sociological and cultural aspects of health and mental health.
She has a long-term interest in the analysis of eating disorders and how they have been understood within historical, popular, lived and treatment contexts.
Her other work includes research collaborations with the NHS around genetic testing for common complex conditions and cardiovascular screening as well as antibiotic prescribing for older adults.
Her first degree – awarded by the University of Tampere in Finland – is in Journalism, and she briefly worked as a political reporter.
When she was awarded a Fulbright Studentship to study for a PhD in Communications, she relocated to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
In the UK, she has worked at the universities of Leicester and Exeter – and joined us in 2007.
For further information on this lecture, please contact the Events team.
