Prof. Des Fitzgerald

Des Fitzgerald is Professor of Medical Humanities at the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork.

He was formerly associate professor of sociology at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter.

He is a sociologist of science and medicine, with particular interests in the psychological and brain sciences. He is interested in how these sciences take things we think of as “cultural,” and things we think of as “biological,” and fold them across one another in complex, delicate, and sometimes awkward ways. He has previously explored this in relation to autism spectrum, mind-wandering, and the experience of feeling stressed in urban environments.

He is the author of Tracing Autism (University of Washington Press, 2017), Rethinking Interdisciplinarity (with Felicity Callard, Palgrave, 2015) and The Urban Brain (with Nikolas Rose, Princeton, 2022). His new book, on the historical sociology of green urbanism, will be published by Faber & Faber in 2023. From January 2023, he will be Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences at the Radical Humanities Laboratory, University College Cork.

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