Vic McGowan
@drvicmcgowan.bsky.social
Medical anthropologist @newcastleuni.bsky.social research focuses on health equity, social justice, community involvement, and coastal towns. Talk too much about my dog! Can also be found posting photos from fieldwork on Instagram @north_southdivide
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“Take away the greed of the private landlord housing market … because that is killing people”: Examining the political economy of housing and health inequalities in four English coastal towns
Health inequities are avoidable and unjust differences in health arising from how society and the economy are structured. These inequalities are drive…
www.sciencedirect.com
Final version of my my paper out now. I highlight how neoliberal governance drives housing related health inequalities, requires comprehensive policies to protect tenants, invest in social housing, and tackle wealth accumulation in the housing market. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Final version of my my paper out now. I highlight how neoliberal governance drives housing related health inequalities, requires comprehensive policies to protect tenants, invest in social housing, and tackle wealth accumulation in the housing market. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
“Take away the greed of the private landlord housing market … because that is killing people”: Examining the political economy of housing and health inequalities in four English coastal towns
Health inequities are avoidable and unjust differences in health arising from how society and the economy are structured. These inequalities are drive…
www.sciencedirect.com
October 31, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Final version of my my paper out now. I highlight how neoliberal governance drives housing related health inequalities, requires comprehensive policies to protect tenants, invest in social housing, and tackle wealth accumulation in the housing market. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Thanks @caraleavey.bsky.social hot off the press new paper from my ethnography of coastal towns highlighting how the political economy of housing is exploiting and harming vulnerable people and deprived communities www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
October 24, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Thanks @caraleavey.bsky.social hot off the press new paper from my ethnography of coastal towns highlighting how the political economy of housing is exploiting and harming vulnerable people and deprived communities www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
We examined narratives from Tim's PhD interviews in Middlesbrough and South Tyneside and my ethnography in Hartlepool, Hastings, Torbay, and Blackpool highlighting how health inequalities are not inevitable, they are a form of violence inflicted through political and economic choices.
New paper from Tim Price and me examining how structural violence interacts with slow and symbolic violence to produce and reinforce health inequalities. Combining data from two qualitative studies across 2 deindustrialised and 4 coastal towns.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A Cycle of Social Violence: a novel theoretical framework for explaining how structural, slow, and symbolic violence interact to produce and maintain health inequalities in England
Health inequalities are a form of violence, produced and sustained by political, economic, and social structures that systematically disadvantage cert…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 22, 2025 at 8:51 AM
We examined narratives from Tim's PhD interviews in Middlesbrough and South Tyneside and my ethnography in Hartlepool, Hastings, Torbay, and Blackpool highlighting how health inequalities are not inevitable, they are a form of violence inflicted through political and economic choices.
New paper from Tim Price and me examining how structural violence interacts with slow and symbolic violence to produce and reinforce health inequalities. Combining data from two qualitative studies across 2 deindustrialised and 4 coastal towns.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
A Cycle of Social Violence: a novel theoretical framework for explaining how structural, slow, and symbolic violence interact to produce and maintain health inequalities in England
Health inequalities are a form of violence, produced and sustained by political, economic, and social structures that systematically disadvantage cert…
www.sciencedirect.com
July 21, 2025 at 7:51 PM
New paper from Tim Price and me examining how structural violence interacts with slow and symbolic violence to produce and reinforce health inequalities. Combining data from two qualitative studies across 2 deindustrialised and 4 coastal towns.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Excellent upcoming event 👇
**Call for papers**
We're running a symposium on health in deindustrialised communities in February. We'll be joined by @gscheiring.bsky.social for the keynote.
Thanks to @fshi.bsky.social, travel/accom bursaries are available.
Call for papers is open until 26th January - more info below⬇️
We're running a symposium on health in deindustrialised communities in February. We'll be joined by @gscheiring.bsky.social for the keynote.
Thanks to @fshi.bsky.social, travel/accom bursaries are available.
Call for papers is open until 26th January - more info below⬇️
January 8, 2025 at 4:43 PM
Excellent upcoming event 👇
Reposted by Vic McGowan
It was never “austerity”. It was a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich.
(Figs via We Own It / @cathobbs.bsky.social)
(Figs via We Own It / @cathobbs.bsky.social)
December 5, 2024 at 9:30 AM
It was never “austerity”. It was a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich.
(Figs via We Own It / @cathobbs.bsky.social)
(Figs via We Own It / @cathobbs.bsky.social)
Reposted by Vic McGowan
How privatisation works (and Thames Water is just the latest example).
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵
November 18, 2024 at 12:02 PM
How privatisation works (and Thames Water is just the latest example).
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵
Great to see @profbambra.bsky.social has made the move 👋
November 18, 2024 at 9:32 AM
Great to see @profbambra.bsky.social has made the move 👋
Reposted by Vic McGowan
Anyone from a working class community could have predicted this. Probably did predict it. Same goes for Sure Start. But we shout into the void.
New research from the IFS showing the closure of youth centres during the 2010s was shortsighted. For every £1 saved, the costs to affected users, crime victims and public spending in the police and the criminal justice system amount to £2.85
ifs.org.uk/publications...
ifs.org.uk/publications...
The effects of youth clubs on education and crime | Institute for Fiscal Studies
Using quasi-experimental variation from austerity-related cuts, I provide the first causal estimates of youth clubs' effects on education and crime.
ifs.org.uk
November 15, 2024 at 9:02 AM
Anyone from a working class community could have predicted this. Probably did predict it. Same goes for Sure Start. But we shout into the void.
New paper from Tim's PhD. "They're not mentally ill, their lives are just shit" exploring stakeholders' perspectives on deaths of despair in Middlesbrough.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
“They're not mentally ill, their lives are just shit”: Stakeholders' understanding of deaths of despair in a deindustrialised community in North East England
The rise in mortality in high-income countries from drug, suicide, and alcohol specific causes, referred to collectively as ‘deaths of despair’, has r…
www.sciencedirect.com
September 10, 2024 at 9:15 AM
New paper from Tim's PhD. "They're not mentally ill, their lives are just shit" exploring stakeholders' perspectives on deaths of despair in Middlesbrough.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
👏"we have laid at the door of immigrants the consequences of an entire economic model that has defunded the state and privileged big businesses and private capital, and concentrated asset accumulation in the south of the country with no foresight or plan"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
After the riots, Keir Starmer should tell us the truth about our country. This is why he won't | Nesrine Malik
The violence exposed racist narratives based on lies. Yet where is the counter-argument, asks Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
www.theguardian.com
August 19, 2024 at 7:15 AM
👏"we have laid at the door of immigrants the consequences of an entire economic model that has defunded the state and privileged big businesses and private capital, and concentrated asset accumulation in the south of the country with no foresight or plan"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
New paper from our Wellcome Trust funded research examining health inequalities between the north and south of England. Participants discussed political and economic structures as central to understanding regional health inequalities
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
“Power, control, strain”: Lay perceptions of health inequalities across England's ‘North South divide’
People in the North of England live shorter, less healthy lives than those in the South. Despite the significance of this ‘North South health divide’,…
www.sciencedirect.com
August 8, 2024 at 10:01 AM
New paper from our Wellcome Trust funded research examining health inequalities between the north and south of England. Participants discussed political and economic structures as central to understanding regional health inequalities
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
"The UK is a wealthy country, but it's also quite an unfair country, our resources are not equally distributed and deaths of despair are one avoidable consequence of that unequal distribution"
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-...
March 15, 2024 at 8:58 AM
"The UK is a wealthy country, but it's also quite an unfair country, our resources are not equally distributed and deaths of despair are one avoidable consequence of that unequal distribution"
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-...
Only 10% of UK levelling up funds spent, say MPs - on.ft.com/4caC8mJ via @FT
March 15, 2024 at 8:55 AM
Only 10% of UK levelling up funds spent, say MPs - on.ft.com/4caC8mJ via @FT
"That’s what I’ll remember and never forgive about this century’s Conservatives: that they took pragmatic, everyday generosity and kindness, and used it to shore up a state that was cruel, and everyone in it more precarious"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
From starving students to emaciated pets: why are hunger and poverty the UK’s new normal? | Zoe Williams
The Conservatives have taken pragmatic, everyday charity and kindness and used it to shore up the cruel state they have created, writes Zoe Williams
www.theguardian.com
February 21, 2024 at 7:33 PM
"That’s what I’ll remember and never forgive about this century’s Conservatives: that they took pragmatic, everyday generosity and kindness, and used it to shore up a state that was cruel, and everyone in it more precarious"
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
well this looks nicer than the old place!
February 14, 2024 at 12:01 PM
well this looks nicer than the old place!