Ian Dashfield

PhD Candidate in Sociology

Supervisors: Professor Kevin Dew, Dr Hazel Godfrey, and Dr David Carmel

I came to VUW in 2020 as a mature student interested in philosophy of mind and sociology of knowledge – motivated by both my experiences with the health system, and the dramatic revival of the far-right. I was (and remain) fascinated by the diversity of ways that people experience and interpret their existences, perceptually and conceptually, and the largely unexplored relationship between these ‘individual differences’ and social context.

Over my undergraduate and honours, these interests developed what is now my PhD research, which investigates how pain and pain science are perceived and understood by the users and providers of chronic pain management services.

Healthcare is haunted by a dualistic tension between the private nature of pain and the universalist assumptions required by standardisation and regulation. These ‘biomedically Cartesian’ distinctions between ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ health are being challenged by the growing influence of neuroscience in clinical practice. One dramatic example is in the management of chronic pain – which affects around a fifth of all people. Here, the scientific consensus is that pain is a complex representation of expected danger with physical, psychological, and social determinants. This is in opposition to seemingly most understandings of chronic pain as simply ongoing acute pain, caused solely by bodily damage.

These critical shifts have begun to undermine the dominance of pharmacological and surgical interventions, with a shift towards ‘whole person’ pain self-management being endorsed in many domestic and international guidelines. This approach combines education about the neuroscience of pain with graduated physical, psychological, and occupational therapy. Through potentially violating the division of health into physical and (the much more stigmatised and undesirable) mental, both providers of pain care and people with pain grapple not only with practical and clinical issues, but also with the power of socially-specific beliefs and norms regarding what pain, illness, and care are ‘supposed’ to be.

Research Interests

Health and illness, chronic conditions, dis/ability, stigma, medicalisation, embodiment practices, science and technology studies, phenomenology

Oral Presentations

2025. Dashfield, I. "‘It isn’t weird – we’re weird about it’ Neuroscience, embodied minds, and pedagogical contact in the search for justice and legitimation for contested conditions." SAANZ Conference, 3 December, 2025.

2024. Dashfield, I. "Pain, the brain, and the radical possibilities of the embodied-constructive turn." SAANZ Conference, 4 December, 2024.