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Miss Michelle Sokol

Profile summary

  • Research Student
  • Research Student
  • Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies
  • School of Health, Wellbeing & Social Care
  • Health & Social Care
  • michelle.sokol

Professional biography

I am a medical anthropologist by training. I received my MPhil in medical anthropology from the University of Oxford in 2018 and received my BA in anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2015. Following the completion of my studies I began work at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). At the NMC I was able to combine my interests in both narratives and patient experience in a new and practical way. This work led to my current status as a PhD research student at the OU.

Research interests

My research interests include the place that narratives have in our society, especially in medicine. I am interested in the narratives that patients, service users and their family members tell about the experience of care and what learning can arise from listening closely to these narratives. I am also interested in participation in both care and when things go wrong such as in complaints or fitness to practise processes. 

My research at the OU is concerned with how regulators might listen to and act on public and patient narratives in fitness to practise. This public perspective comes from the experiences of those members of the public who have raised concerns to a healthcare professional regulator on behalf of themselves of a family member. This work is deeply concerned with issues of authoritative knowledge and various types of power. It hopes to incite tangible change as regulators consider what it means to be person-centred.