Staff profile

Originally from Lisboa (Portugal), I came to Britain to study for a postgraduate degree, planning to stay for 9 months only. I ended up doing a PhD and before coming to Durham University in 2006, I was a social researcher at the Centre for Health Services Research at Newcastle University (2002-2006).

My research has been devoted to understanding the role of knowledge, evidence and standardised tools in the organisation of health care and governance of biomedicine. In 2012, I published The Transformation of Contemporary Health Care: the Market, the Laboratory and the Forum (Routledge), where I proposed that the cognitive and political regimes of efficiency, effectiveness and involvement have supported key changes in health care organisation since the 1970s.

Since 2006, I have also been interested in the role of science and technology in the making and transformation of ageing societies. 

I am currently researching and writing a historical sociology of forms of personalised age measurement - biological age, functional age, biomarkers of ageing - from the 1950s to the present.

I was plenary speaker at the BSA Medical Sociology Annual Conference 2014. Watch the pleanary paper at

http://vimeo.com/108471823

I have given invited papers at Cambridge University, Cleveland (CWRU), Lisbon (ISEG), Maastricht U., Montreal (McGill U.), Paris (Ecoles des Mines) and York University.

I am currently a member of the editorial board of Sociology of Health and Illness.

Between 2007 and 2010 I was elected member of the Council for the European Association for Studies of Science and Technology.

The external organisations I have worked with are: Durham and Darlington NHS Trust and Alzheimer's Society.

I enjoy supporting postgraduate students, and welcome PhD proposals in any of the areas mentioned above, plus: actor network theory,social studies of medicine, science and technology studies, dementia studies.

• Aging, Technology and Society
• Piority setting in health care
• Knowledge and the organisation of health care
• Social Studies of Medicine

• Health and Social Theory

• European Patient Organisations in the Knowlege Society (EPOKS)
• Mapping and evaluating the use of contextual data in undergraduate admissions in Scotland

• 2019: RT200146: Co-I Motivation and Complexity, Leverhulme Trust, 2019-10-01 - 2022-09-30, £112.1k
• 2009: European Patient Organisations in Knowledge Society - EPOKS(£56131.60 from European Commission)

• 2006: Elected Council member for the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST):
• 2006: Plenary Speaker: Wellcome Trust Biomedical Ethics Summer School:

Authored book

• Moreira, T. (2016). Science, Technology and the Ageing Society. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
• Moreira, T. (2012). The Transformation of Contemporary Health Care The Market, The Laboratory, and the Forum. New York Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Chapter in book

• Moreira, T. (2014). Risk, Uncertainty and Health. In The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society. Wiley Blackwell. 2083.
• Moreira, T. & Palladino, P. (2012). Questions of Life and Death: A Genealogy. In Routledge Handbook of Body Studies. Turner, Bryan S. Routledge. 362-374.
• Moreira, T. (2010). Actor-network theory. In Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication. Priest, S. New York: Sage.
• Moreira, T. (2010). When trials are not enough: clinical effectiveness vs. cost-effectiveness in the dementia drugs controversy (2005-08). In Medical Proofs, Social Experiments: clinical trials in shifting contexts. Will, Catherine & Moreira, Tiago Farnam: Ashgate. 85-102.
• Moreira, T. (2010). Prologue: Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease: Health, Ageing and Justice. In Health, Promotion and Prevention Programmes in Practice. Mathar, Thomas, & Jansen, Yvonne J.F.M. Berlin: Transcript Verlag. 29-52.
• Moreira, T. & Rapley, T. (2010). Understanding the shaping, incorporation and co-ordination of health technologies through qualitative research. In The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Methods in Health Research. Bourgeault, I,, DeVries, R. & Dingwall, R. London: Sage. 658-672.
• Moreira, T. (2010). Now or later? Individual disease and care collectives in the memory clinic. In Care in Practice: On Tinkering in Clinics, Homes and Farms. Mol, Annemarie,, Moser, Ingunn, & Pols, Jeannette, Berline: Transcript Verlag. 119-140.
• Moreira, T. (2009). Hope and truth in drug development and evaluation in Alzheimer's Disease. In Treating Dementia: do we have a pill for it?. Ballenger, Jesse. Whitehouse, Peter. Lyketsos, Constantine. Rabins, Peter. & Karlawish, Jason. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 210-230.

Edited book

• Will, Catherine & Moreira, Tiago (2010). Medical Proofs/Social experiments: clinical trials in shifting contexts. Farnham: Ashgate.

Journal Article

• Moreira, Tiago (2023). A genealogy of the scalable subject: Measuring health in the Cornell Study of Occupational Retirement (1950–60). History of the Human Sciences 36(2): 128–153.
• Moreira, Tiago (2022). Ratifying frailty. Journal of Aging Studies 62: 101055.
• Langstrup, Henriette & Moreira, Tiago (2022). Infrastructuring experience: what matters in patient-reported outcome data measurement? BioSocieties 17(3): 369-390.
• Moreira, Tiago (2021). Translating cell biology of ageing? On the importance of choreographing knowledge. New Genetics and Society 40(3): 267-283.
• Moreira, Tiago, Hansen, Asger Aarup & Lassen, Aske Juul (2020). From quantified to qualculated age: the health pragmatics of biological age measurement. Sociology of Health & Illness 42(6): 1344-1358.
• Boliver, V, Gorard, S, Powell, M & Moreira, T (2020). The use of access thresholds to widen participation at Scottish universities. Scottish Affairs 29(1): 82-97.
• Moreira, Tiago (2019). Anticipatory measure: Alex Comfort, experimental gerontology and the measurement of senescence. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 77: 101179.
• Maldonado, OJ & Moreira, T. (2019). Metrics in Global Health: Situated differences in the valuation of human life. Historical Social Research 44(2): 202-224.
• Moreira, T. (2019). Devicing future populations: Problematizing the relationship between quantity and quality of life. Social Studies of Science 49(1): 118-137.
• Moreira, T. (2016). De-standardising ageing? Shifting regimes of age measurement. Ageing &Society 36(07): 1407-1433.
• Moreira, T. (2015). Unsettling Standards: the biological age controversy. The Sociological Quarterly 56(1): 18-39.
• Moreira, T. (2015). Understanding the role of patient organizations in health technology assessment. Health expectations 18(6): 3349-3357.
• Lassen, A.J. & Moreira, T. (2014). Unmaking old age: Political and cognitive formats of active ageing. Journal of Aging Studies 30: 33-46.
• Moreira, T., O'Donovan, O. & Howlett, E. (2014). Assembling Dementia Care: Patient organisations and social research. BioSocieties 9(2): 173-193.
• Rabeharisoa, V., Moreira, T. & Akrich, M. (2014). Evidence-based activism: Patients' organisations, users' and activist's groups in knowledge. BioSocieties 9(2): 111-128.
• Moreira, T. (2014). La démence, entre laboratoire et marché. Sciences Sociales et Santé 32(3): 69-98.
• O'Donovan, O., Moreira, T. & Howlett, E. (2013). Tracking Transformations in Health Movement Organisations: Alzheimer's Disease Organisations and their Changing ‘Cause Regimes’. Social Movement Studies 12(3): 316-334.
• Moreira, T. (2012). Health Care Standards and the Politics of Singularities: Shifting In and Out of Context. Science, Technology & Human Values 37(4): 307-331.
• Moreira, T. (2011). Health care rationing in an age of uncertainty: a conceptual model. Social Science and Medicine 72(8): 1333-1341.
• Moreira, T. & Palladino, P. (2011). Population laboratories’ or ‘laboratory populations’? Making sense of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, 1965–1987. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42(3): 317.
• Moreira, T., May, C. & Bond, J. (2009). Regulatory objectivity in action: Mild cognitive impairment and the collective production of uncertainty. Social Studies of Science 39(5): 665-690.
• Burges Watson, D, Moreira, T & Murtagh, MJ (2009). Little bottles and the promise of probiotics. Health: an Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 13 (2): 219-234
• Moreira, T. & Palladino, P. (2009). Ageing between gerontology and biomedicine. Biosocieties 4(4): 348-365.
• Moreira, T. & Palladino, P. (2008). Squaring the curve: The Anatomo-politics of ageing, life and death. Body and Society 14(3): 21-47.
• Moreira, T. & Bond, J. (2008). Does the prevention of brain ageing constitute anti-ageing medicine? Outline of a new space of representation for Alzheimer's Disease. Journal of Aging Studies 22(4): 356-365
• Moreira, T., Hughes, J., Kirkwood, T., May, C.R., McKeith, I. & Bond, J. (2008). What explains variations in the clinical use of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as a diagnostic category? International Psychogeriatrics 20(4): 697-709
• Moreira, T. (2008). Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Machines and the work of coordinating technologies at home. Chronic Illness 4(2).
• Moreira, T. (2007). How to Investigate the Temporalities of Health. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research 8(1): Art 13.
• Wride, N., Finch, T, Rapley, T., Moreira, T., May, C.R. & Fraser, S. (2007). What's in a name. Medications terms, what they mean and how to use them. British Journal of Ophthalmology 91: 1422-1424.
• Moreira, T. (2007). Entangled Evidence: Knowledge making in systematic reviews in health care. Sociology of Health and Illness 29(2): 180-197.
• Moreira, T. (2006). Sleep, health and the dynamics of biomedicine. Social Science & Medicine 63(1): 54-63.
• Moreira, T, May, C, Mason, J & Eccles, M (2006). A new method of analysis enabled a better understanding of clinical practice guideline development processes. JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY 59(11): 1199-1206.
• Moreira, T. (2006). Heterogeneity and Coordination of Blood Pressure in Neurosurgery. Social Studies of Science 36(1): 69-97.
• May, C, Rapley, T., Moreira, T, Finch, T. & Heaven, B. (2006). Technogovernance: Evidence, subjectivity, and the clinical encounter in primary care medicine. Social Science and Medicine 62(4): 1022-1030.
• Moreira, T. (2005). Diversity in Clinical Guidelines: The role of repertoires of Evaluation. Social Science & Medicine 60(9): 1975-1985.
• Moreira, T. & Palladino, P. (2005). Between truth and Hope: Parkinson's Disease, Neural Transplants and the Self. History of the Human Sciences 18(3): 55-82.
• Moreira, Tiago (2004). Self, Agency and the Surgical Collective: detachment. Sociology of Health & Illness 26(1): 32-49.
• Moreira, T. (2004). Coordination and Embodiment in the Operating Room. Body and Society 10(1): 109-129.
• Moreira, T. (2004). Surgical monads: a social topology of the operating room. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22(1): 53-69.
• Moreira, T. (2000). Translation, Difference and Ontological Fluidity: Cerebral Angiography and Neurosurgical Practice (1926-45). Social Studies of Science 30(3).