Imogen Bevan

Contact details

Address

Street

Institute of Geography
University of Edinburgh

City
Drummond Street
Post code
EH8 9XP

Biography

Background

Dr Imogen Bevan is a social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. Imogen was awarded her PhD in 2022 for the thesis "Bittersweet: Living with sugar and kin in contemporary Scotland", University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research explored sugar consumption and family-making in an Edinburgh neighbourhood, showing that sugar is central to processes of social relatedness, but poses ethical problems for people bringing up children. She currently works as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Human Geography, School of Geosciences.

 

 

Responsibilities & affiliations

Imogen is an affiliate of the University of Edinburgh's Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH). She is also a member of Food Researchers in Edinburgh (FRiEd) and the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships (CRFR).

Current research interests

Food, Drugs, Kinship, Health, Morality and ethics, Policymaking, Children, Scotland, Sensory Methods

Knowledge exchange

I have experience working with schools, including co-designing teacher/student activities for P5-P7 and S1-S2 classes“Can sensory memories capture hidden histories of people, places and things? Sensory oral histories of sugar in Greenock” (Dr Marisa Wilson & Dr Imogen Bevan).

Project activity

Bittersweet: Living with sugar and kin in Edinburgh, Scotland

My PhD explored sugar consumption at a time when sugar has been vilified due to its links with (childhood) obesity. Rather than ask why people ‘fail’ to eat healthy diets, I undertook a 13-month ethnography in an Edinburgh neighbourhood to find out why sugar matters to people and how it mediates relationships with relatives, friends and the state. I found that sugar is central to social relationships, and can be thought about as a substance of kinship and relatedness (Carsten 1995), changing our understandings of what it means to be related in contemporary Scotland. Situated at the intersection of medical anthropology, anthropology of food and kinship studies, and informed by the recent emphasis on ethics and morality in anthropology, my research analysed the ethical dilemmas that sugar poses to those raising children.

Current project grants

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

Past project grants

ESRC PhD scholarship

Invited speaker

Invited speaker at University of Amsterdam's 'Health, Care and the Body' seminar series (November 2024).

Invited speaker at University of Warwick’s Food Global Research Priorities public seminar series, Coventry, UK (June 2022).

Invited speaker at Moray House School of Education seminar series, University of Edinburgh (December 2019).

Papers delivered

July 2024: “Redoing food anthropology with sugar and sweetness.” Presented at the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), Barcelona, Spain.

November 2022: “Testing uncertainties: The lateral flow test as social infrastructure in the UK’s COVID-19 pandemic”, Presented with Dr Alice Street at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting, Seattle, U.S.

March 2021: “Sugar, a morally ambiguous substance” Presented at the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) conference ‘Responsibility’, St Andrews, UK.

November 2019: “Sugar, a substance of kinship and relatedness?” Presented at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) annual meeting, Vancouver, Canada.

June 2019: “A Proper Birthday Cake: Sugar and family-making in Edinburgh.” Presented at the British Sociological Association (BSA) 6th annual food conference, Prato, Italy.

In the press

My research has featured on BBC radio 4 Podcast 'Thinking Aloud', Episode 'Sugar': https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r1ps

I have also created podcast content on the topic Scotland’s Good Food Nation Act for the FRiEd Podcast: Interview with Professor Mary Brennan.

Bevan, I. (Forthcoming 2024). Sugar, a morally ambiguous substance: Responsibility, social class and pleasure in Scotland’s state primary schools. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 11 (3).

Bevan, I. Bauld, L., Street, A. (2024). Who We Test For: Aligning Relational and Public Health Responsibilities in COVID-19 Testing in Scotland. Medical Anthropology, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2024.2349514

Bauld, L., Street, A., Connelly, R., Bevan, I. et al. (2023). Student and staff views and experiences of asymptomatic testing on a university campus during the Covid-19 pandemic in Scotland: a mixed methods study. BMJ Open, 13 (e065021). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-065021

Street, A., Lee, S. J., Bevan, I. (2022). The Hidden Burden of Medical Testing: Public Views and Experiences of COVID-19 Testing as a Social and Ethical Process. BMC Public Health, 22 (1837). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-14217-2

Bevan, I., Stage Baxter, M., Stagg, H. R., Street, A. (2021) Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior Related to COVID-19 Testing: A Rapid Scoping Review. Diagnostics, 11 (9), 1685. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics11091685

Bevan, I. (2016). E-cigarettes: Smoking pleasure reinvented? The many faces of harm reduction in France. Contemporary Drug Problems, 43 (3), 228-241. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091450916657

This article was published on