
Background
Ben is a sociologist interested in organisational processes of shaping and orchestrating digital futures. Focusing on digital transformations in the healthcare sector, his research explores how digital health practices cope with and utilise the combined and interrelated challenges of increases in quantification (e.g. data-intensive medicine), ubiquitous connectivity (e.g. tele-medicine) and unprecedented modes of instantaneous calculation (e.g. algorithmic medicine). Utilising a codesign approach, his research reconceptualises design itself as a more collaborative, participatory and anticipatory mode of governing digital futures that aims to generate new possibilities and value-centric approaches for promoting health in digital societies.
Research interests
- Digital Futures
- Innovation Governance
- Sociomaterial Practices and Infrastructures
- Digital Health
- Digital Work
- Codesign Processes
- Participatory Research
- Digital Research Methodologies
- Sociology of Health and Illness
- Science and Technology Studies
Journal articles
- Marent, B., Henwood, F., EmERGE Consortium (2021) Platform encounters: A study of digitised patient follow-up in HIV care. Sociology of Health & Illness. 43:1117–1135 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9566.13274
- Henwood, F., Marent, B. (2019) Understanding digital health: Productive tensions at the intersection of sociology of health and science and technology studies. Sociology of Health & Illness, 41(s1): 1-15 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9566.12898
- Marent, B., Henwood, F., Darking, M., EmERGE Consortium (2018) Ambivalence in digital health: Co-designing an mHealth platform for HIV care. Social Science & Medicine, 215: 133-141 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953618304799?via%3Dihub
- Marent, B., Henwood, F., Darking, M., EmERGE Consortium (2018) Development of an mHealth platform for HIV Care: Gathering User Perspectives Through Co-Design Workshops and Interviews. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 6(10), e184 https://mhealth.jmir.org/2018/10/e184/
Books
Henwood, F., Marent, B. (eds) Digital Health: Sociological Perspectives. Wiley-Blackwell
Book chapters
- Marent, B., Langstrup, H. (forthcoming) Digital Health: Practices and Infrastructures. In: Alan Petersen (ed.) Handbook of the Sociology of Health and Medicine. Edward Elgar.
- Marent, B., Henwood, F. (2021) Digital health. In: Kerry Chamberlain & Antonia Lyons (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Critical Issues in Health and Illness. Abingdon: Routledge. 261-275