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My PhD Title: 'Social, economic and cultural capital & health: exploring independent associations between cultural engagement and health - a biosocial analysis of biomarkers and epigenetics in Understanding Society'
Supervisor: Daisy Fancourt, Anne McMunn, Meena Kumari
Lay summary: Emerging evidence has suggested cultural engagement, whether in the form of creative activities such as singing or receptive activities such as visiting art galleries, may be good for health. However, the social and economic resources available to people may affect their chances of engaging culturally. Therefore, my project will explore links between cultural engagement and health and investigate whether these links are independent of social and economic resources. I’m interested in how these activities may affect a range of health outcomes including mental, physical and biological health.
My Background
I have a BSc in Biological Sciences specialising in Cell and Molecular Biology from University College, Durham. After my undergraduate I lived at home and spent a year saving up to go to the Florence Academy of Art where I completed an Oil Portraiture Summer Course. I then became interested in the England’s North/South health divide and enjoyed a non-academic placement with the Northern Health Science Alliance before studying Medicine, Health and Public Policy at King’s College London where my MSc thesis explored associations between neighbourhood deprivation and alcohol related liver disease in the North West of England. I joined UCL in September 2018 on the Soc-B centre for doctoral training in biosocial research programme where I became interested in biosocial cultural engagement research. I’m additionally interested in the sociology of safety assessment and toxicology and have been involved with social media and mental health research for young people and wrote a blog for the Royal Society of Public Health and appeared on BBC and Sky News shows.
Qualifications
BSc – Biological Sciences (Cell and Molecular). University College, Durham University. 1st Class Honours.
MSc – Medicine, Health and Public Policy. King’s College London.
Publications
Walker, E. and Roberts, R. (2018). Collaboration and competition: ethics in toxicology. Toxicology Research, 7(4), pp.576-585.
Walker, E.S., Roberts, R.A., and Gill, J.H. (2019). Collaboration, competition and publication in toxicology: views of British Toxicology Society members. Toxicol Res (Camb) 8, 480–488.
Walker, E., Ploubidis, G., and Fancourt, D. (2019). Social engagement and loneliness are differentially associated with neuro-immune markers in older age: Time-varying associations from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Brain Behav Immun.
RSPH blog: https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/guest-blog-taking-the-me-out-of-social-media.html
Appointments
Post graduate teaching assistant and personal tutor for Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods, Basic Statistics for Medical Sciences & Epidemiology MSc modules running within the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care.
Contact details (email, twitter handle, Instagram etc.)
@emma_s_walker
@artby__emma