Dr. Sigrun Olafsdottir to Present at BUSSW Social Welfare Colloquium on November 15

Faculty and doctoral students from the greater scholarly community at Boston University and beyond are invited to join BUSSW faculty and doctoral students for the Social Welfare Analysis Colloquium on November 15, featuring Dr. Sigrun Olafsdottir, who will present a paper entitled, “Beds or Meds? The Changing Societal Responses to Mental Health Problems in Advanced, Industrialized Nations, 1960-2002.” The presentation is part of the Social Welfare Analysis Colloquium series held at the Boston University School of Social Work, 264 Bay State Road, Boston, on Thursdays, from 3 to 4:30 p.m., in the Conant Lounge.

Dr. Olafsdottir is an assistant professor in the department of sociology at BU. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University in 2007. Her research interests include medical sociology, sociology of mental health, comparative research, political sociology, sociology of culture, gender, and research methods. Professor Olafsdottir’s work seeks to understand how institutional arrangements influence individual level outcomes. Frequently, but not exclusively, the focus is on health, illness, and healing. Her dissertation, Medicalizing Mental Health: A Comparative View of the Public, Private, and Professional Construction of Mental Illness, explores how medicalization, as a social process, is constructed and addressed at multiple avenues within and across nations. Her other work focuses on how culture and politics impact issues of health, illness, and healing. For example, one stream of research focuses on how inequality and the welfare state impact health across nations with different social organizations of welfare. Another stream of research explores the role of culture in understanding how and why individuals seek help for health problems.

A short wine and cheese reception will immediately follow the colloquium.