Staff profile

Dr Tarryn Phillips

Lecturer

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

School of Social Sciences

Martin Building, Room 469, Melbourne (Bundoora)

 

Qualifications

BA (Hons-UWA), PhD (UWA).

Area of study

Legal Studies

Brief profile

With an interdisciplinary focus on power, inequality and social justice, my research interests lie in medical anthropology/sociology and legal studies. At this medico-legal nexus, my key areas of interest are in the professions of medicine and the law in Australia and cross-culturally; how medical and legal systems manage uncertainty; how they define, mediate and punish deviance; and how they influence and are influenced by their socio-cultural surroundings.

Teaching units

  • Law and Legal Consciousness (LST1LAS)
  • Legal Practices (LST1LEP)
  • Workplacce Competence (LST1LWC)
  • Victimology (LST2/3VIC)

Recent publications

  • Phillips. T. (Forthcoming) Law, Environmental Illness and Medical Uncertainty, Taylor and Francis: London
  • Phillips, T. (2012) ‘Repressive Authenticity in the Quest for Legitimate Sickness:Surveillance and the Contested Illness Lawsuit’, Social Science and Medicine, vol 75, pp. 1762- 1768.
  • (2010) ‘“I Never Wanted to Be a Quack!” The professional deviance of plaintiff experts in contested illness lawsuits’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, vol 24, no. 2
  • (2010) ‘Debating the Legitimacy of an Environmental Illness: The case of multiple chemical sensitivities in Australia (MCS)’ Sociology of Health and Illness, vol 32, no. 7

Research projects

My current research project is on contested illnesses and the ways in which sufferers are legitimated, repressed, accepted and rejected by medical and legal processes.