Research Overview

My research broadly seeks to understand the social impact of life support technologies by exploring how end-of-life care happens in Bangladesh and the factors that shape this care. I will explore the decision-making of close kin who are on life support in hospital and how their religious and ethical beliefs inform what they do, and how economic status affects access to different levels of medical intervention. I would also like to understand how the increasing presence of life support technologies may impact on these decisions about death and the way people (relatives and health professionals) think about death itself.Although it is a comparatively new research area but given that life support technologies are here to stay, and have quickly become an integral part of medical care, it is urgent that social knowledge about its impact be generated. Highly-acclaimed research on this issue has already been conducted in many countries over the last three decades, but none exists, to my knowledge, in Bangladesh.