Christian Heath

Christian Heath is Professor of Work and Organisation. He specializes in video-based studies of social interaction, drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, with a particular interest in multimodality; the interplay of talk, bodily conduct and the use of tools and technologies.

He is currently undertaking projects in areas that include health care, command and control, auctions of fine art, and museums and galleries. Project funding includes grants from the UK Research Councils (ESRC, EPSRC & AHRC), Wellcome and various research programmes of the European Union. Projects involve close collaboration with partners in industry, the public services, and academia both in the UK and abroad.

He has held positions, including visiting professorships and senior research fellowships, in Universities and Industrial Research Laboratories in the UK and mainland Europe. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences (FAcSS), a member of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars and a Freeman of the City of London. In 2015 was given the EUSSET-IISI Lifetime Achievement Award presented to scholars for an outstanding contribution to the reorientation of the fields of computing and informatics.

His publications number more than 150 articles and nine books including: - The Dynamics of Auction: Social Interaction and the Sale of Fine Art and Antiques (Cambridge 2013: Best Book Award from the International Society of Conversation Analysis), Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life (Sage 2010, with Hindmarsh, J. & P. Luff), and Technology in Action (Cambridge 2000, with P. Luff). He is co-editor of the book series Learning and Doing: Social Cognitive and Computational Perspectives (Cambridge University Press) and serves on the editorial board of a number of journals.

Research Interest: social interaction and workplace studies, technology, the cultural industries, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

Publications

• Transparency and Embodied Action: Turn Organization and Fairness in Complex Institutional Environments 01 September 2019
• Visible Objects of Concern:: issues and challenges for workplace ethnographies in complex environments 01 July 2019
• Postscript: The significance of video research methodology for health and social science 01 January 2009
• Creating Interdependencies: Managing Incidents in Large Organizational Environments 01 January 2018
• Objective Measures and Subjective Reports: Examining Optometric Practice 15 August 2017
• Video and the Analysis of Social Interaction: an interview with Christian Heath. 01 January 2016
• Global participation and the interactional organisation of auctions of fine art and antiques 01 January 2014
• Exchanging implements: the micro-materialities of multidisciplinary work in the operating theatre 01 February 2018
• Hands on Hitchcock: Embodied Reference to a Moving Scene 07 May 2011
• The Naturalistic Experiment: Video and Organizational Interaction 26 December 2017