ANDREW SCOTT CATEY,
Ph.D., J.D.
Dissertation Research Project
The background to this research project is ongoing welfare state restructuring and processes of decentralization. The Blair Government entered office in 1997 with an ambitious legislative agenda, including constitutional reforms that empowered new elected legislative bodies in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. These new bodies were given powers to administer important services, including health, education, and housing, among others. My research focuses on the relations between state, civil society, and subjects in the decentralized regions, with an eye on the intersections of race and health care reforms, specifically in terms of mental health care and service delivery. My interests circulate around the complex connections between law & policy, institutions, consciousness, and the shaping of social subjectivities, especially concerning race and ethnicity, and mental health and illness. Building on preliminary field research undertaken in 2006, I began my dissertation fieldwork in July 2008 and concluded in August 2009, with a return visit in 2010, and a planned return in 2011. My primary field sites were Cardiff and London, but my research took me to cities, towns, and villages throughout the south Wales corridor, the South Wales Valleys, and the southeast of England, as well as to Bristol, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, among others. I successfully defended my dissertation in June of 2011.
In support of this research project, for the academic year 2008-2009 I was awarded an appointment as a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and the School of Law at Cardiff University, in Cardiff, Wales.
