Research Associate

In this role, the successful candidate will make a leading contribution to the ERC-funded project MORTALMED (Mortal Medicine: The Social Life of a Death-Inducing Pharmaceutical), working with Dr Marcos Freire de Andrade Neves and the wider MORTALMED research team. The postholder will join an internationally oriented and collaborative project that traces the circulation of sodium pentobarbital across transnational networks and local fields of use.

The postholder will conduct ethnographic research in Mexico, contributing to the project’s Mexico-based subproject on the formal and informal networks through which sodium pentobarbital is accessed, sold, regulated, and transported. The subproject focuses especially on Mexico’s role in the transnational circulation of pentobarbital, where the drug is legally available through veterinary markets while also becoming implicated in cross-border assisted dying practices. Through fieldwork in Mexico, the postholder will examine how these overlapping uses are shaped by pharmaceutical regulation, commercial practice, legal uncertainty, and the everyday practices through which people encounter, handle, sell, prescribe, discuss, or seek access to the drug.

Pentobarbital will be approached both as an object of research and as a methodological entry point. The successful candidate will be expected to use ethnographic methods, including participant observation, interviews, and documentary, media, or archival analysis where appropriate, to follow the drug into the wider social worlds it helps to reveal.

Applications are also welcome from candidates interested in developing further methodological and creative ways of engaging with pentobarbital, including chemoethnography, assemblage ethnography, archival work, or experimental approaches to tracing pharmaceutical circulation, regulation, and use.

The successful candidate will be expected to undertake fieldwork, analyse and interpret research material, contribute to academic publications and other project outputs, and support the conceptual development of MORTALMED.

Informal enquiries should be directed to Dr Marocs Freire de Andrade Neves on Marcos.Freire@glasgow.ac.uk

This post is full time (35 hours per week) and has funding available for up to 4 years in the first instance.  Relocation assistance will be provided where appropriate.

For further details on this exciting role and to apply on line, please visit: https://www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/research-associate-5990208?source=gla.ac.uk

Closing date: 6^th September 2026 at 23:45

We believe that we can only reach our full potential through the talents of all. Equality, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of our values. Applications are particularly welcome from across our communities and in particular people from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) community, and other protected characteristics who are under-represented within the University. Read more on how the University promotes and embeds all aspects of equality and diversity within our community https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity/

We endorse the principles of Athena Swan https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/humanresources/equalitydiversity/athenaswan/ and hold bronze, silver and gold awards across the University.

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