Rebecca Lynch

University of Exeter, Department of Sociology , Philosophy and Anthropology, Faculty Member

University of Cambridge, Public Health & Primary Care, Faculty Member

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Department of Public Health and Policy, Faculty Member

King's College London, School of Population Health and Environmental Sciences, Research Fellow

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Rebecca Lynch completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at University College London (UCL) and is now a Lecturer in Medical Anthropology at the University of Exeter. Rebecca is particularly interested in the construction of bodies (particularly bodily boundaries), moral aspects of health, illness and medicine, and (bio)medical categorisations (including of risk). Her work includes a focus on the role of the more-than-human (technologies, bodily fluids, spirit agents, material ‘stuff’) and attends to embedded values and assumptions. She has undertaken fieldwork with Evangelical Christians in Trinidad, and on biomedical constructions of the body and health in the UK, particularly in relation to moral framings and the creation/widening of health inequalities. Rebecca continues to work and publish in both social science and medicine. She contributes to projects in public health and health services research, aiming to shift conversations around the role of social and cultural factors within health and medicine.

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KU Leuven

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Oleg Yu Vorobyev

Siberian Federal University

David Seamon

Kansas State University

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Université de Mons

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

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Publications by Rebecca Lynch

How do health behaviour interventions take account of social context? A literature trend and co-citation analysis

Health:An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 2017

Of flesh and mesh: Time, materiality, and health in surgical recovery

Medical Materialities. Toward a Material Culture of Medical Anthropology. London: Routledge, pp.23-35, 2019

Making a decision about surgery for female urinary incontinence: A qualitative study of women’s views.

International Urology Journal (IUJ), 32(1), 127-133, 2021

Living in the End of Days: Risk, Anxiety, Subjectivity, and the Devil in a Trinidadian village

Anthropology and Medicine 2021, 28:1, 2021

Apocalyptic futures: Morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world.

by Rebecca Lynch and Tristan Sturm

Anthropology and Medicine 28:1, 2021

Posthumanism and Public Health

Posthuman perspectives: relevance for a global public health

Critical Public Health, 2017

Slippery Slopes and Trojan Horses: The Construction of E-cigarettes as Objects in Public Health Debate

Quantified Lives and Vital Data

The Devil is Disorder. Bodies, Spirits and Misfortune in a Trinidadian village

The impact of social sciences on health behaviour interventions has diminished – more interdisciplinary, culture-focused research is needed

Capturing the impact of social sciences on other disciplines is notoriously difficult. Daniel Hol... more Capturing the impact of social sciences on other disciplines is notoriously difficult. Daniel Holman, Rebecca Lynch, and Aaron Reeves have looked at the example of health behaviour interventions (HBIs), a field recently criticised for failing to draw on alternative, social sciences approaches that emphasise the structured and contextual aspects of behaviour and health. A bibliometric analysis of the HBIs field over the last decade reveals that despite an increase in the number of papers published, the proportion of those that explicitly address issues related to social context has actually diminished. Rather than continuing to focus on individualistic explanations of behaviour, a more thoroughly interdisciplinary approach is required; one that adopts a more nuanced conception of how the social and cultural context shapes behaviour.

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Diverse bodies: the challenge of new theoretical approaches to medical anthropology

Anthropology & Medicine

The impact of multimorbidity on health care costs and utilisation: a systematic review of the UK literature.

British Journal of General Practice 71(702): e39-e46, 2021

Cosmologies of fear: the medicalization of anxiety in contemporary Britain

Falling into a routine: from habits to situated practices

Sociology of Health & Illness

Quantified Lives and Vital Data: Exploring Health and Technology through Personal Medical Devices.

Beyond the person: the construction and transformation of blood as a resource

Critical Public Health, 2017

Donor understandings of blood and the body in relation to more frequent donation

Vox Sanguinis 113(4): 350-356, 2018

In the loop: Practices of self-monitoring from accounts by trial participants

Health (London, England : 1997), Jan 13, 2015

Self-monitoring, by which individuals record and appraise ongoing information about the status of... more Self-monitoring, by which individuals record and appraise ongoing information about the status of their body in order to improve their health, has been a key element in the personal management of conditions such as diabetes, but it is now also increasingly used in relation to health-associated behaviours. The introduction of self-monitoring as an intervention to change behaviour is intended to provide feedback that can be used by individuals to both assess their status and provide ongoing support towards a goal that may be formally set or remains implicit. However, little attention has been paid to how individuals actually engage in the process or act upon the information they receive. This article addresses this by exploring how participants in a particular trial ('Get Moving') experienced the process and nature of feedback. Although the trial aimed to compare the potential efficacy of three different monitoring activities designed to encourage greater physical activity, pa...

Cosmos, Gods and Madmen. Frameworks in the Anthropologies of Medicine. (2014) Oxford and New York: Berghahn

The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologi... more The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies: how societies make sense of such issues as prediction and control of misfortune and fate; the malevolence of others; the benevolence (or otherwise) of the mystical world; local understanding and explanations of the natural and ultra-human worlds. This volume presents differing categorizations and conflicts that occur as people seek to make sense of suffering and their experiences. Cosmologies, whether incorporating the divine or as purely secular, lead us to interpret human action and the human constitution, its ills and its healing and, in particular, ways which determine and limit our very possibilities.

‘Introduction’ to R. Littlewood and R. Lynch (eds) Cosmos, Gods and Madmen

How do health behaviour interventions take account of social context? A literature trend and co-citation analysis

Health:An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 2017

Of flesh and mesh: Time, materiality, and health in surgical recovery

Medical Materialities. Toward a Material Culture of Medical Anthropology. London: Routledge, pp.23-35, 2019

Making a decision about surgery for female urinary incontinence: A qualitative study of women’s views.

International Urology Journal (IUJ), 32(1), 127-133, 2021

Living in the End of Days: Risk, Anxiety, Subjectivity, and the Devil in a Trinidadian village

Anthropology and Medicine 2021, 28:1, 2021

Apocalyptic futures: Morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world.

by Rebecca Lynch and Tristan Sturm

Anthropology and Medicine 28:1, 2021

Posthumanism and Public Health

Posthuman perspectives: relevance for a global public health

Critical Public Health, 2017

Slippery Slopes and Trojan Horses: The Construction of E-cigarettes as Objects in Public Health Debate

Quantified Lives and Vital Data

The Devil is Disorder. Bodies, Spirits and Misfortune in a Trinidadian village

The impact of social sciences on health behaviour interventions has diminished – more interdisciplinary, culture-focused research is needed

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Diverse bodies: the challenge of new theoretical approaches to medical anthropology

Anthropology & Medicine

The impact of multimorbidity on health care costs and utilisation: a systematic review of the UK literature.

British Journal of General Practice 71(702): e39-e46, 2021

Cosmologies of fear: the medicalization of anxiety in contemporary Britain

Falling into a routine: from habits to situated practices

Sociology of Health & Illness

Quantified Lives and Vital Data: Exploring Health and Technology through Personal Medical Devices.

Beyond the person: the construction and transformation of blood as a resource

Critical Public Health, 2017

Donor understandings of blood and the body in relation to more frequent donation

Vox Sanguinis 113(4): 350-356, 2018

In the loop: Practices of self-monitoring from accounts by trial participants

Health (London, England : 1997), Jan 13, 2015

Cosmos, Gods and Madmen. Frameworks in the Anthropologies of Medicine. (2014) Oxford and New York: Berghahn

‘Introduction’ to R. Littlewood and R. Lynch (eds) Cosmos, Gods and Madmen

Outside the person: the construction of blood as a resource for donation

The body technological: feedback and the quantification of the self through self-monitoring devices

The Devil in the body: concepts of health, illness and the body in a Trinidadian village

Knowing how the world works: Christianities and cosmological worldview in a Trinidadian village

Beyond ‘religion’ and ‘medicine’: cosmological worldview and everyday practices in a Trinidadian village

Cosmologies of uncertainty: spirits, sickness and modernity in Trinidad

Old spirits, new spirits: making visible supernatural encounters, past and present

Fear, spirits and cautionary tales: close encounters of the immoral kind

Cosmologies of uncertainty: spirits, sickness and agency in a Trinidadian village

'Just in case': notions of luck and superstition amongst gamblers in London

Apocalyptic futures: morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world

Anthropology & Medicine, 2021

In the context of Covid-19, anthropologists of medicine and religion alike may be tempted to join... more In the context of Covid-19, anthropologists of medicine and religion alike may be tempted to join with the media in declaring that humanity is facing the end of the world as we know it. Indeed, as the global pandemic rages on, and the dramatic restrictions of national lockdowns ease and then retighten with an anomic unevenness akin to cardiac arrhythmia, it would be easy to imagine that these ‘strange times we now live in’ are somehow utterly exceptional – an eschatological precipice like no other. Yet, as the papers in this Special Issue on ‘Apocalyptic futures: Morality, health and wellbeing at the end of the world’ amply demonstrate, while the health and social crisis of the coronavirus pandemic is replete with compelling end-times signs, it would be wrong to assume that this new disease – even in its most acutely challenging of moments – holds a monopoly over human imaginations and experiences of world endings. Put simply, popular fascinations with the end of the world did not begin with Covid-19, nor, in our view, will they end with it. Taken literally, rather than as a bad pun, this observation about the longue durée of apocalypticism provokes new and important questions which the authors contained within this Special Issue seek to answer. How do human imaginations of the biomedical and spiritual future alter life in the present? What happens, in this forward-looking temporality, to human reflections on the past – to ‘lessons learned’ about old diseases now eradicated, or past sins now atoned for? In the context of global disease, international conflict, national protests, and localized fears and anxieties, what does wellbeing look like, and how do humans continue to promote it – medically and morally – even as they face their own mortality, and that of those they love? In seeking to safeguard the ‘health’ of a nation, how might political and clinical interventions butt up against (or marry with) millenarian religious activism heralding an imminent apocalypse? If, according to some medical and religious commentators, the apocalypse is temporally soon, geographically here, and corporally near, then how might such convictions change the way humans experience their own bodies, as well as the world around them?

Adoption of C-reactive protein point-of-care tests for the management of acute childhood infections in primary care in the Netherlands and England: a comparative health systems analysis

BMC Health Services Research

Background The use of point of care (POC) tests varies across Europe, but research into what driv... more Background The use of point of care (POC) tests varies across Europe, but research into what drives this variability is lacking. Focusing on CRP POC tests, we aimed to understand what factors contribute to high versus low adoption of the tests, and also to explore whether they are used in children. Methods We used a comparative qualitative case study approach to explore the implementation of CRP POC tests in the Netherlands and England. These countries were selected because although they have similar primary healthcare systems, the availability of CRP POC tests in General Practices is very different, being very high in the former and rare in the latter. The study design and analysis were informed by the non-adoption, abandonment, spread, scale-up and sustainability (NASSS) framework. Data were collected through a review of documents and interviews with stakeholders. Documents were identified through a scoping literature review, search of websites, and stakeholder recommendation. Sta...

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Living in the end of days: risk, anxiety, subjectivity and the devil in a Trinidadian village

Anthropology & Medicine, 2021

Abstract Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Trinidad, this paper examines how the framing of a ... more Abstract Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Trinidad, this paper examines how the framing of a particular apocalyptic future provided a moral commentary and model for wellbeing in contemporary everyday life. Changing social, political, and economic circumstances and relations had brought a range of new risks and anxieties into daily life. These more recent problems originating from beyond the village (such as climate change, criminality, inequality, pollution, neglect by the State) could not be resolved through working with obeah spirits as might have been used previously for more local issues, or through the long-established Catholic and Anglican churches. Instead evangelical Christian cosmology and practices gave a means of making sense of such issues and for protecting oneself. The development of a strong individual relationship with God connected individuals to a greater power and a global community, framing such problems not only as the work of the Devil but as evidence of the coming of the End of Days. Political protest or attempts at wider change were futile therefore; individuals should focus on their own practices to develop a strong relationship with God. Health and wellbeing relied on an individualised and deep relationship with the Holy Spirit. This was developed through practices that both drew on, and helped create, a type of neoliberal logic and global subjectivity to understand and live within current times, evangelical Christianity promoting ways of living without anxiety in the present through understandings of an apocalyptic future.

The Devil is Disorder

Personal Medical Devices: People and Technology in the Context of Health

Quantified Lives and Vital Data, 2017

Why should we explore personal medical devices (PMDs)? Fuelled by the growth of so-called lifesty... more Why should we explore personal medical devices (PMDs)? Fuelled by the growth of so-called lifestyle conditions, shifts to personalised and patient-led medicine and the increasing sophistication and miniaturisation of devices themselves, PMDs have become increasingly significant in both clinical and non-clinical arenas. This chapter presents some of the intersections and new relationships, possibilities and constructions of health that the use and development of these technologies present. PMDs question existing concepts of bodily boundaries and processes (the ‘personal’), the purview of medicine and its handling of its objects of study (the ‘medical’) and wider consequences of these technologies (the ‘device’). Introducing the contributions to the book, the chapter argues that nuanced, critical and empirically grounded approaches are needed to interrogate and understand emerging issues in this field.

Cosmologies of Fear: The Medicalization of Anxiety in Contemporary Britain

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A process evaluation of the Welsh Assembly Government’s primary school free breakfast initiative

Cosmologies of Fear

Cosmos, Gods and Madmen, 2016

Medical Materialities

Medical Materialities, 2019

Surgical interventions are not often the focus of medical anthropological projects and yet offer ... more Surgical interventions are not often the focus of medical anthropological projects and yet offer a way in which anthropologists might go 'beyond the body proper' (Farquhar and Lock 2007). This call for a different type of engagement with the body, alongside approaches that seek to include more material aspects of health and illness within an ethnographic study, challenge a division between the biological (or 'nature') as the site of investigation for medicine, and the social (or 'culture') and the point of interest for anthropology. Instead, this position argues that we can never be separated from the material world-our bodies and our health are both constituted of, and made through, the material. A more traditional anthropological approach to surgery might focus on accounts of the experience of (in this case) the women undergoing surgery, decisions they have made around this, and attitudes towards their body and to medicine. It might also consider relations between medical professionals and how they interact with patients. By focusing on accounts and experiences and leaving everything within the skin as the domain of medicine, a distinction between the biological and the sociocultural is set up, with clinicians working in the domain of the former while the anthropological gaze is restricted to the latter. This dualist separation suggests that 'nature' and 'culture' can, and should, be examined separately, the boundaries between both clear and stable. Such a separation is directly challenged by work both within medical anthropology and in biomedicine, for example, on chronic conditions, epigenetics, and so-called lifestyle diseases. Through such examples, the social and biological cannot be so clearly drawn apart, and medical anthropologists increasingly look to include the materiality of the body in their work. Such an approach also challenges an acceptance of the body as a universal, uniform, and standard 'body proper.' The body is obviously not a new focus within anthropology and has generated many different approaches, such as Durkheim's (1995 [1912 ]) split between higher socialised bodies and the physical body, Mary Douglas' (1973) natural bodies used as social analogies, and Foucauldian disciplinary bodies of governmentality (

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ESRC/HEFCW Scoping Study into Quantitative Methods Capacity Building in Wales

Cosmos, Gods and Madmen: Frameworks in the Anthropologies of Medicine

Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2017

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Variation in availability and use of surgical care for female urinary incontinence: a mixed-methods study

Health Services and Delivery Research, 2021

Background Urinary incontinence affects between 25% and 45% of women. The availability and qualit... more Background Urinary incontinence affects between 25% and 45% of women. The availability and quality of services is variable and inequitable, but our understanding of the drivers is incomplete. Objectives The objectives of the study were to model patient, specialist clinician, primary and secondary care, and geographical factors associated with referral and surgery for urinary incontinence, and to explore women’s experiences of urinary incontinence and expectations of treatments. Design This was a mixed-methods study. Setting The setting was NHS England. Participants Data were collected from all women with a urinary incontinence diagnosis in primary care data, and all women undergoing mid-urethral mesh tape surgery for stress urinary incontinence were included. Interviews were also carried out with 28 women from four urogynaecology clinics who were deciding whether or not to have surgery, and surveys were completed by 245 members of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist...

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Of flesh and mesh

Medical Materialities, 2019

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The Devil is Disorder: Bodies, Spirits and Misfortune in a Trinidadian Village

This work examines constructions of the body, health, illness and misfortune in a Trinidadian vil... more This work examines constructions of the body, health, illness and misfortune in a Trinidadian village to consider how anxieties about risky and changing life circumstances are dealt with through cosmological frameworks. As such these discussions hope to contribute to the study of changing frameworks (particularly in relation to the growth of Evangelical Christianity), modernity in relation to post-colonial states, as well as to thinking on the body and health in medical anthropology. This is undertaken through the production of a detailed and ethnographically-grounded account of discourses and practices in a village that perceives itself as marginal to the rest of Trinidad. The growth of crime and violence in Trinidad more broadly forms a background to everyday life, which I link to the growth of Evangelical Christianity in the village. I suggest that this Evangelical Christian cosmological framework develops from, and contributes to, existing cultural understandings and provides a ...

Impact of multimorbidity on healthcare costs and utilisation: a systematic review of the UK literature

British Journal of General Practice, 2020

BackgroundManaging multimorbidity is complex for both patients and healthcare systems. Patients w... more BackgroundManaging multimorbidity is complex for both patients and healthcare systems. Patients with multimorbidity often use a variety of primary and secondary care services. Country-specific research exploring the healthcare utilisation and cost consequences of multimorbidity may inform future interventions and payment schemes in the UK.AimTo assess the relationship between multimorbidity, healthcare costs, and healthcare utilisation; and to determine how this relationship varies by disease combinations and healthcare components.Design and settingA systematic review.MethodThis systematic review followed the bidirectional citation searching to completion method. MEDLINE and grey literature were searched for UK studies since 2004. An iterative review of references and citations was completed. Authors from all articles selected were contacted and asked to check for completeness of UK evidence. The National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute quality assessm...

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Donor understandings of blood and the body in relation to more frequent donation

Vox Sanguinis, 2018

Background and objectives: The INTERVAL trial aimed to find the optimum frequency of blood donati... more Background and objectives: The INTERVAL trial aimed to find the optimum frequency of blood donation to enhance blood supplies and maintain donor health. This not only requires biological knowledge, but also an appreciation of donor perspectives, and how their experiences and beliefs might be central if any changes are ever to be made. To address this, trial participants were interviewed about their ideas of blood and the body in relation to their experiences of increased donation frequency. Materials and methods: Thirty in depth face-to-face interviews conducted with blood donors participating in the trial. Results: Three key themes emerged: ideas about how blood and iron reserves are replenished, and what people did to facilitate this; beliefs about physiological differences relating to age and gender; and practical issues that affected the experience of donation. Overall, participants interviewed welcomed more frequent donation, despite a range of pragmatic concerns. Conclusion: Despite some practical obstacles, increased donation frequency aligned with participant's ideas about bodily replenishment, the value of donation, and their identity as enduring blood donors. They therefore supported the idea of increasing frequency of donation, independently of the biomedical evidence from the trial itself.

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P51 Comorbidities and the clinical pathway to access joint replacement surgery: an exploratory qualitative study

Poster presentations, 2018

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Building a logic model for a complex intervention: a worked example from the Well London CRCT

Using the conceptual framework we identified 3 areas of theory relevant to explain change:1) comm... more

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Measures of exposure to the Well London Phase-1 intervention and their association with health well-being and social outcomes

Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2014

Intervention Area Questions Have you heard of the Well London programme?  Yes  No  Not sure  ... more Intervention Area Questions Have you heard of the Well London programme?  Yes  No  Not sure  Prefers not to say Looking at this list of activities which have been happening in your local area over the last 3 years, for each one please can you tell me whether you have heard of the activity? [TICK ALL THAT APPLY]  Physical activity-'Activate London', sports (football, basketball);Relaxation(yoga, taichi);Walking; Cycling  Healthy Eating-Eatwell (Cook & Eat; Cook and Taste; Cook, Grow and Eat); Community Feasts; Food Buying Schemes (Food Coop ; Mobile food stores or Food box scheme)

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Making a decision about surgery for female urinary incontinence: a qualitative study of women’s views

International Urogynecology Journal, 2020

Introduction and hypothesis This qualitative interview study explores aspects women with urinary ... more Introduction and hypothesis This qualitative interview study explores aspects women with urinary incontinence(UI) reflect upon when considering whether or not to have surgery. Conducted prior to the recent mesh pause in the UK, the article provides insights for current and future approaches to shared decision-making. Methods Qualitative in-depth interviews of 28 patients referred to secondary care for stress and mixed UI who were considering UI surgery. Participants were recruited from four urogynaecology clinics in the Midlands and South England, UK. Interviews were conducted in clinics, in patient homes, and by telephone. Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method. Results Participants’ accounts comprised three key concerns: their experience of symptoms, the extent to which these impacted a variety of social roles and demands, and overcoming embarrassment. Accounts drew on individual circumstances, values, and concerns rather than objective or measurable criteria. ...

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