Ilina Singh

Ilina Singh is Professor of Science, Ethics & Society in SSHM, and is cross-appointed to the Institute of Psychiatry. Her work examines the psycho-social and ethical implications of advances in biomedicine and neuroscience for young people and families. Her research has several goals: To investigate the benefits and risks of biomedical and neuroscience technologies for children; to enable evidence-based policy-making in child health and education; and to bring social theory and ethical insights into better alignment with children’s social, emotional and behavioral capacities. Current projects include: the VOICES project (Voices on Identity, Childhood, Ethics & Stimulants: Children join the debate – funded by the Wellcome Trust); SNAPBY (Survey of Neuroenhancement Attitudes & Practices Among British Young people – funded by STICERD); and an edited volume on bio-prediction published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. Future work includes a major project on character and children's moral education.

Ilina’s work is published in leading scientific, clinical, bioethics and social science journals, including Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Social Science and Medicine, Child and Adolescent Mental Health and The American Journal of Bioethics. She sits on international policy and grant-making boards, including the Scattergood Foundation Program for Behavioral Health Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, USA; and the ELSA programme of the Norwegian Research Council. Ilina has been a consultant to health policy working groups in the US and the UK, including the UK National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE); and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/Hastings Center Working Group on Drugs in Pediatric Psychiatry. She is Co-Editor of the journal BioSocieties, and is on the Editorial Board of The American Journal of Bioethics-Neuroscience. In 2013, Ilina was elected a Fellow of the Hastings Centre, the oldest bioethics institution in the world.

Ilina is a principal investigator of the project Voices On Identity, Childhood, Ethics and Stimulants: Children join the debate, a Wellcome Trust-funded research project that sheds fresh light on children’s experiences with ADHD diagnosis and stimulant drug treatments. The project interviewed over 150 children aged 9 – 14 in the United States and United Kingdom using verbal, visual and standardized methods. She is a Co-Investigator in the FP7 project NERRI (Neuroenhancement, Responsible Research and Innovation www.nerri.eu), and in the ESRC project: A New Sociology for a New Century: Transforming the Relations between Sociology and Neuroscience, through a Study of Mental Life and The City.