Nikolas Rose is a preeminent scholar and thought leader in the interdisciplinary field bridging social sciences with life sciences and neuroscience. He currently serves as Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University following his retirement from King's College London in April 2021 where he had been Professor of Sociology since 2012. Prior to his position at King's, Rose held the prestigious Martin White Professorship of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 2002 to 2011 while also serving as Head of the Sociology Department and founding Director of the BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society. His academic journey began with training in biology before transitioning through psychology to sociology, establishing him as a uniquely positioned integrator of scientific and social perspectives.
Rose's seminal contributions include his influential 2007 monograph 'The Politics of Life Itself' which fundamentally reshaped understanding of biopolitics in contemporary society and his 2013 collaborative work 'Neuro: the new brain sciences and the management of the mind' with Joelle Abi-Rached. He pioneered the concept of 'critical friendship' between social and life sciences, advocating for interdisciplinary dialogue to address complex questions at the intersection of biology and society. His extensive scholarship on the social and political history of human sciences, genealogy of subjectivity, and changing rationalities of political power has established foundational frameworks for understanding how life sciences transform conceptions of human identity. Rose's research has been instrumental in mapping how neuroscience and biomedicine reshape notions of normality, pathology, and the governance of human beings in contemporary society.
As chair of the Neuroscience and Society Network and former member of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics for six years, Rose has significantly shaped ethical discourse surrounding emerging biotechnologies. His leadership extends to collaborations with major institutions including the Academy of Medical Science, Wellcome Trust, and Royal Society where he served on the Science Policy Advisory Group until 2016. Rose co-founded King's ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health, establishing the UK's first major research center examining social dimensions of mental distress. Currently, his work continues to explore the transformative impact of life sciences and neurosciences on human identity, advancing critical perspectives on how scientific knowledge reshapes social governance and individual experience in the twenty-first century.
