Ass.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Christian Haddad
Assistant Professor, Department for Science & Technology Studies & Department of Sociology
Tenure Track Professorship Medicine, Planetary Health, and Biopolitics
Principal Investigator, ERC Starting Grant ALTERBIOTIC
Christian Haddad holds a joint affiliation as Assistant Professor at the Department for Science & Technology Studies and the Department of Sociology. He is the Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant ALTERBIOTIC, which investigates the scientific, political, and economic challenges involved in developing new antibiotic therapies.
Haddad is a member of the university-wide Research Network Health in Society and a member of the WHO Collaborating Center for Social and Behavioral Research in Antimicrobial Resistance.
Biography
Haddad has a background in political science, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. His research in the nexus between medicine, health and politics grew during his doctoral training, when Haddad was a member of the interdisciplinary Life-Science-Governance research platform at the University of Vienna and a researcher in the EU-funded REMEDiE project on regenerative medicine in Europe. He obtained his Dr.phil. with a thesis on the ‘biopolitics of innovation,’ focusing on the visions and strategies of advanced biotech therapy developers amidst broader political, ethical, and regulatory contestations over stem cell technologies.
Following his doctorate, Haddad worked as a senior research fellow at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (oiip), where he led the Global Politics of Innovation research area. His work at the oiip covered multiple research projects on innovation policy discourses in domains such as global health security, cybersecurity, international development, and renewable energy transitions, with a regional focus on the EU and the Middle East & North Africa.
Thereafter, Haddad joined the Department of Science & Technology Studies at the University of Vienna as a postdoctoral researcher, where he developed his current research interest in the politics of antibiotics innovation as a pressing global health challenge.
Haddad is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Health Policy, University of Sussex. Previously he held visiting fellowships at the Center for Biomedicine & Society at King’s College London, the Department of Sociology of the University of Sydney, NSW, and at the Central European University (CEU).
Haddad has taught over 30 courses across various study programs at the University of Vienna, including political science, sociology and science & technology studies. He further taught courses in the MA Program International Relations at the Central European University and in the Psychology Program at the Institute of European Studies Abroad (IES Abroad).
Haddad has also received applied psychosocial training in psychotherapy and mental health through basic training in psychotherapy. He is currently a provisional member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association (WPV).
Research Interests:
Situated within political sociology and STS, Haddad’s main research interests weaves together conceptual and empirical concerns for global health, biopolitics of security and pharmaceutical innovation.
His ERC-funded project, ALTERBIOTIC, examines the science, politics, and political economies of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the ‘global antibiotics crisis.’ The project focuses on industry strategies and policy initiatives aimed at developing radically new approaches to treating bacterial infections. It explores AMR as a transboundary crisis of modern biopolitics which puts into question dominant regimes of health, growth, and security, which have long depended on the chemical infrastructures of readily available and effective pharmaceuticals.
Main fields of expertise:
- Social studies of medicine, health and politics
- Sociology of policy knowledge and ignorance – agnotology
- Social, economic and cultural studies of pharmaceuticals
- Science, technology and innovation policy in/for global health
- Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
- Social studies of psychiatry, psychosocial care and mental health
- Qualitative and interpretive social science research methodologies
- Sociological and cultural theory