Box 1916

Maxcy Hall

112 George Street

Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863-2367

Sociology@brown.edu

 

201 Maxcy Hall
401-863-2633 phone
401-863-3213 fax
Phil_Brown@brown.edu

Ph.D. Brandeis University

Brown University Research Profile Page

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Interest:
Medical Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Environmental Justice, Environmental Health

My research includes disputes over environmental causation of illness, biomonitoring, community response to toxic waste-induced disease, social movements in health, and the Jewish experience in the Catskill Mountains resort area. My books include “Illness and the Environment: A Reader in Contested Medicine,” “Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat's Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area,” “In the Catskills: A Century of the Jewish Experience in ‘The Mountains,’" and “Social Movements in Health.” My most recent books (2007) are “Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement,” and the fourth edition of “Perspectives in Medical Sociology.

One of my projects examines labor-environment coalitions, and another examines the intersection of breast cancer advocacy and environmental justice. I co-lead the Contested Illnesses Research Group with Professor Rachel Morello-Frosch (now at University of California-Berkeley). I direct the Community Outreach Core of Brown’s Superfund Basic Research Program and direct the Ethical and Social Implications component of Brown’s National Science Foundation NIRT project in nanotechnology. My newest project is Katrina and the Built Environment: Spatial and Social Impacts, a multidisciplinary effort with four other colleagues, funded by the National Science Foundation.

 I have a joint appointment in Environmental Studies, which offers BA, ScB, and MA degrees. I am also affiliated with the Committee on Science & Technology Studies, which offers an undergraduate concentration. I am an Associate Member of the Program in Judaic Studies.

 I teach the following undergraduate courses: Environmental Sociology: An Environmental Justice Approach, Contested Environmental Diseases, and a first-year seminar on Environment and Society; and the following graduate seminars: Social Movements in Health, Health Institutions and Providers, Qualitative Methods and Field Work.