KIRSTEN BELL

* Research Associate
* kibell(at)interchange.ubc.ca
* Ph.D. in social anthropology, James Cook University, Australia, 2000

Kirsten Bell is a social/cultural anthropologist by training and originally conducted fieldwork on new religious movements in South Korea. She continued to conduct fieldwork in South Korea until 2005, but over the past six years has moved exclusively into the anthropology and sociology of biomedicine and public health.  Her current research interests coalesce around the concept of health and the ways it is used to legitimize social, moral, political and economic agendas which often serve to exclude and stigmatize particular practices (and groups) as ‘dangerous’ and ‘threatening’ to health and the social order. This underlying interest manifests in several distinct but intersecting areas of research and writing, including: tobacco, cancer, addiction, obesity and genital cutting.  Prior to arriving in Canada in 2006 she held lectureships in anthropology departments at Macquarie University in Australia (2003-2006) and the University of Northern Colorado (2000-2002) in the USA.

Kirsten is currently an Associate Editor of the international journal Critical Public Health (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/ccph). She is also a member of the editorial board of Health Sociology Review (http://hsr.e-contentmanagement.com/).

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Research interests include medical anthropology and sociology, anthropology of biomedicine, cancer, tobacco, addiction, gender, genital cutting, research ethics, Korean new religious movements. 

CURRENT & RECENT FUNDED PROJECTS

1. Co-Principal Investigator: Critically Interrogating Cancer Survivorship: Social Science & Humanities Perspectives. Funded by CIHR Meetings, Planning & Dissemination Grant. (Nominated PI: Svetlana Ristovski-Slijepcevic)
2. Principal Investigator: Alcohol, Tobacco and Obesity: Interrogating the New Public Health’s ‘Axis of Evil’. Funded by CIHR Meetings, Planning & Dissemination Grant & BC Mental Health & Addictions Research Network Seed Grant.
3. Principal Investigator: Between Life and Death: the Cultural Contradictions of Cancer Survivorship.  Funded by SSHRC Operating Grant.
4. Principal Investigator: The Cultural Issues Connected with Cancer Survivorship: No Longer Lost in Transition or Translation.  Funded by CIHR Knowledge Translation Grant Program. 
5. Principal Investigator: Rights, Risks and Smoking: How Denormalisation Mediates Patient-Provider Interactions in Primary Health Care Settings.  Funded by CIHR Ethics Seed Grant Program.
6. Principal Investigator: Culturally Situating Cancer Support Groups. Funded by CIHR Cross Cultural Palliative New Emerging Team Project Funding Award. 
7. Co-investigator: Exploring strategies for community-driven knowledge translation by and for women with addictions. Funded by CIHR Knowledge Synthesis Grant Program (PI: Amy Salmon). 
8. Co-investigator: Developing a protocol for respectful health research involving substance-using women. Funded by CIHR Ethics Seed Grant (PI: Amy Salmon). 

PUBLICATIONS

Books

Bell, K., McNaughton, D. & Salmon, A. (eds) (2011) Alcohol, Tobacco and Obesity: Morality, Mortality and the New Public Health. Routledge: United Kingdom. www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415590174/

Chapters

1. Bell, K., McNaughton, D. & Salmon, A. (2011) Introduction. Alcohol, Tobacco and Obesity: Morality, Mortality and the New Public Health. Routledge: United Kingdom, pp. 1-16.
2. Bell, K. (2011) Legislating abjection? Secondhand smoke, tobacco control policy and the public’s health.  In K Bell, D McNaughton & A Salmon (eds), Alcohol, Tobacco and Obesity: Morality, Mortality and the New Public Health. Routledge: United Kingdom, pp. 73-89 (reprint).

Refereed Journal Articles

1. Bell, K. & Salmon, A. (2011) What women who use drugs have to say about ethical research: Findings of an exploratory qualitative study. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 6(4). In press.
2. Bell, K. & Ristovski-Slijepcevic, S. (2011) Metastatic cancer and mothering: Being a mother in the face of a contracted future. Medical Anthropology, 30(6): 629-649.
3. Bell, K., Bowers, M., McCullough, L. & Bell, J. (2011) Physician advice for smoking cessation: Time for a paradigm shift? Critical Public Health, DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2011.572155.
4. Lee, J. & Bell, K. (2011) The impact of cancer on family relationships amongst Chinese patients: Findings of a qualitative study. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 22(3): 225-234.
5. Bell, K., Salmon, A. & McNaughton, D. (2011) Editorial: Alcohol, tobacco, obesity and the new public health. Critical Public Health, 21(1): 1-8.
6. Bell, K. (2011) Legislating abjection? Secondhand smoke, tobacco control policy and the public’s health. Critical Public Health, 21(1): 49-62.
7. Bell, K., & Kazanjian. A. (2011) PSA testing: Molecular technologies and men’s experience of prostate cancer survivorship. Health, Risk & Society, 13(2): 183-196.
8. Ristovski-Slijepcevic, S., Bell, K., Chapman, G. & Beagan, B. (2010) ‘Being thick indicates you are eating, you are healthy and you have an attractive body shape’: Perspectives on fatness and foot choice amongst Black and White men and women in Canada. Health Sociology Review, 19(3): 317-329.
9. Bell, K., Lee, J., Foran, S., Kwong, S. & Christopherson, J. (2010) Is there an ideal cancer support group? Key findings from a qualitative study of three groups. Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 28(4): 432-449.
10. Bell, K., McCullough, L., Salmon, A. & Bell, J. (2010) Every space is claimed: Smokers’ experiences of tobacco denormalisation. Sociology of Health & Illness, 32(6): 1-16. 
11. Bell, K., Salmon, A., Bowers, M., Bell, J. & McCullough, L. (2010) Smoking, stigma and tobacco denormalization: Further reflections on the use of stigma as a public health tool. Social Science & Medicine. 70: 795-799.
12. Bell, K. (2010) Cancer survivorship, mor(t)ality, and lifestyle discourses on cancer prevention. Sociology of Health & Illness, 32(3): 349-364.
13. Bauld, L., Bell, K., McCullough, L., Richardson, L. & Greaves, L. (2010) The effectiveness of NHS treatments for smoking cessation. Journal of Public Health, 32(1): 71-82.
14. Bell, K., McNaughton, D. & Salmon, A. (2009) Medicine, morality and mothering: Public health discourses on foetal alcohol exposure, smoking around children and childhood overnutrition. Critical Public Health, 19(2): 155-170. 
15. Bell, K., McCullough, L., Devries, K., Jategaonkar, N., Greaves, L. & Richardson, L. (2009) Location restrictions on smoking: Assessing their differential impacts and consequences in the workplace. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 100(1): 46-50.
16. Bell, K., Lee, J. & Ristovski-Slijepcevic, S. (2009) Perceptions of food and eating among Chinese patients with cancer: Findings of an ethnographic study. Cancer Nursing, 32(2): 118-126. 
17. Bell, K. & Salmon, A. (2009) Pain, physical dependence, and pseudoaddiction: Redefining addiction for ‘nice’ people? International Journal of Drug Policy, 20: 170-178.

*This article made the journal’s 25 hottest articles list in the academic year October 2009-September 2010.

18. Bell, K. (2009) ‘If it almost kills you that means it’s working’: Cultural models of chemotherapy expressed in a cancer support group. Social Science & Medicine, 68: 169-176.
19. Bell, K. (2008) Pilgrims and progress: the production of religious experience in a Korean religion. Nova Religio: the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 12(1): 83-102. 
20. Richardson, L., Greaves, L., Jategaonkar, N., Bell, K., Pederson, A. & Tungohan, E. (2007) Rethinking an assessment of nicotine dependence: a sex, gender and diversity analysis of the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence. Journal of Smoking Cessation, 2(2): 59-67.
21. Bell, K. & McNaughton, D. (2007) Feminism and the invisible fat man. Body & Society, 13(1): 108-132.
22. Bell, K. (2005) Genital cutting and western discourses on sexuality. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 19(2): 125-148.

*This article made Anthrosource’s list of 25 most read anthropology articles in 2005 and 2009.

23. Bell, K. (2005) The trouble with charisma: Religious ecstasy in Ch'ondogyo. Asian Studies Review, 29(1): 3-18.
24. Bell, K. (2004) Cheondogyo and the Donghak Revolution: the (un)making of a religion. Korea Journal, 44(2): 123-148.
25. Bell, K. (2003) The gendering of religious experience: Ecstatic trance in Cheondogyo. Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 9(2): 7-37.

Other Publications

1. Bell, K. (2009) Going to the dentist bites. Globe and Mail, 26 October 2009, www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/going-to-the-dentist-bites/article1337894/.
2. Bell, K. & Christopherson, J. (2008) ‘Colorectal cancer is just not sexy’: Survivorship experiences in a colorectal cancer support group (Abstract). Psycho-Oncology, 17(Suppl. 6): S127-S128.
3. Bell, K. (2008) NICE Review of NHS Smoking Cessation Services (Abstract). Journal of Smoking Cessation, 2(Suppl. 1): 13.
4. Bell, K. (2008) Review of The AIDS Pandemic by James Chin (2006). Critical Public Health, 18(1). 
5. Bell, K. (2006) Review of The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia by Shinji Yamashita, Joseph Bosco & JS Eades, eds (2004). The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 7(2).
6. Bell, K. (2005) Review of Living Dangerously in Korea by Donald Clark (2003) & Korean Shamanism by Chongho Kim (2003). Asian Studies Review, 29(3): 313-315.
7. Bell, K. (2004) Review of Laying Claim to the Memory of May: a Look Back at the 1980 Kwangju Uprising by Linda Lewis (2002). The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 15(2).

AWARDS & FELLOWSHIPS

1. Brocher Foundation Visiting Researcher Fellowship to Geneva, Switzerland (Summer 2012)
2. BC Women’s Hospital Grace Barraclough Research Award (2006)
3. Korea Foundation Summer Research Fellowship in Korean Studies (Summer 2002)
4. James Cook University Medal (1996)

 

 Web Editor Login