Leah Williams Veazey

@leahmouse.bsky.social

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ARC DECRA Research Fellow (sociology, health, migration, care) at The Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies (@healthy-societies.bsky.social) at The University of Sydney. Lover of books, Londoner at ❤️

Promotional image of the book, Communities of Care in Migration. It has a blue cover with an orange, yellow and red abstract image.

Beige background with a black line drawing of a handheld megaphone. Text reads: We're hiring! Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Sociology. Work with Dr Leah Williams Veazey and the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies team to generate foundational knowledge about healthcare worker migration. Part-time (0.5FTE) for 1 year. Academic level A. Start May/June 2025.

Screenshot of article abstract: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a rapidly escalating global health threat, known increasingly through different forms of monitoring. Surveillance, both of resistant organisms and of the antimicrobial prescribing practices that contribute to their proliferation, has increased dramatically over the last decade. So too have audits, which are routinely deployed to evaluate, and ensure accountability for, the alignment of local prescribing practices with established “best practice” guidelines. However, governing AMR in this way raises important questions including: how do these forms of monitoring play out in practice, and with what consequences? How do they articulate with the machinations and temporalities of hospital governance more generally? Here, drawing on in-depth interviews with thirty-six participants ranging from ward nurses to hospital executives in metropolitan Australia, we ask what, precisely, this particular way of monitoring medics and microbes—which we conceptualize here as the (anti)microbial gaze—makes visible in the hospital setting, what might be obscured, and how this particular way of knowing may delimit what is seen as possible in terms of intervening in the growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance.

(Screenshot) In this special issue of The Journal of Sociology, we take various social tensions the COVID-19 pandemic brought out of the cultural shadows as impetus to centre the future as a key orientation for contemporary sociological scholarship. Mobilising attention to the different forms of temporal dis/order that have become intensified in recent years, we seek to develop a more explicit understanding of how the future features prominently, if often subtly, across all aspects of social life.
In naming this special issue ‘Future/Tense: A Sociology of Temporal Dis/Order’, we refer to the troubles and tensions that the future can bring forth. We also evoke the ways the future can both structure and dissolve our individual and collective hopes, fears and plans for what might happen to us, and the world, tomorrow, next year and/or for generations to come. Additionally, we bring to the fore of analysis the ways that both hope and fear surrounding the future can limit – or, indeed, be deployed to limit – our imaginaries in the present, including our individual and collective capacity to conceive of alternative and emancipatory futures, beyond various capitalist, colonialist and heteronormative pasts.

We are fortunate to include contributions from authors across Australia, the UK, Europe and China that address topics ranging from the seemingly mundane day-to-day activities of living during the pandemic, to questions of mortality, mobility, climate collapse and space colonisation. The contributions are united by their critical attention to the (frequently overlooked) temporal tensions that lie at the heart of many of the key social challenges we confront in the contemporary historical moment.

Screenshot of the title and abstract of a journal article entitled "Future/tense: A sociology of temporal dis/order." Authors are Katherine Kenny, Leah Williams Veazey, Michelle Peterie, Alex Broom and Barbara Prainsack

A group photo of researchers posing in front of a slide presentation that reads: Work in progress presentation.. USYD-NUS-SJTU-SDG Project Futures of Care Workers.

Beautiful scenery in Queenstown, New Zealand. Mountain, water, sky.

Black, red and white event flyer. Text reads: Hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences and the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at The University of Sydney. Event title: Should we stay or should we go? Brexit, European Freedom of Movement, and the Roma in Scotland. Speaker: Professor Colin Clark, University of the West of Scotland. This talk focuses on the implications of Brexit for freedom of movement for central and Eastern European Roma minority communities living and working in the UK. Professor Clark will draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Scotland, tracing how Slovak, Polish and Romanian Roma families have thought about, planned for, and responded to Brexit. The talk also explores the wider ‘place’ of Scotland in Europe and how it positions itself as part of the ‘European project’. Friday 25 October 2024. 12.30-1.30pm. Rm 341, A02 Social Sciences Building (and on zoom).

Two weeks today we will be in the midst of this (sure to be) fabulous event. We've pulled together a line-up of great minds who will all be drawing on their expertise in various corners of migration scholarship to help us to think through care and harm in migration contexts. Specifically, we will be exploring how care and harm can be interwoven and mutually constitutive - whether by accident or design - and what this means for migration-related scholarship and activism.

Michelle Peterie, Marie Segrave, Sukhmani Khorana, Sherene Idriss, Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Matt Withers, University of Sydney, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies

The Cost of Living (Well): A Sociological Study of Cost, Value, and Care. This project aims to uncover the full extent and consequences of rising out-of-pocket healthcare costs in Australia. Out-of-pocket costs (OOPCs) often come as a rude shock and can lead to financial distress, compromised care, increased inequalities, and significant suffering. Taking a person-centred, strengths-based approach, this project will identify how people in need of high-cost care, their carers, and their healthcare providers navigate the difficulties posed by the new OOP economy of healthcare. Expected outcomes include publicly accessible resources and targeted policy and practice advice that will provide significant benefit by reducing the burdens, suffering, and harms caused by high OOPCs in Australia's current healthcare system.

Yellow bold letters on navy blue background. Communities of Care. Call for Papers. Writings on migrant communities' strategies of care for one another.

Image is of 5 students in a seminar room, one is standing clutching books, the others are sitting. Text reads: PhD Scholarship: Healthcare students, migration, work and care. Dr Leah Williams Veazey, ARC DECRA Fellow in Sociology at The University of Sydney, is offering a Scholarship for a PhD student to undertake research on healthcare students' perspectives on migration, work and care. For more information, see https://bit.ly/DE24PhD, QR code or email leahwilliamsveazey@sydney.edu.au. Closing date 29 February 2024.

Announcement bubble: We are hiring. Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies is looking for a Postdoctoral Research Fellow or Research Fellow in Sociology (Level A/B, full-time, fixed-term 2 years).

Infographic explaining the difference in temperature of different interventions. Starting with a stroller air temperature of 37.5 degrees centigrade. Fan only: -0.1 degree. Dry muslin + fan: +1.5 deg. Dry muslin only: +2.6 deg. Dry flannelette only: +3.7 deg. Dry flannelette plus fan: +2.4 deg. Moist muslin only: -3.0 deg. Moist muslin plus fan: -4.7 deg. Image is of strollers illustrating the cloth/fan/temperature information above.

A bronze coloured keep cup.

Top half of image is black text on grey background. ARC Linkage Project Funding Announcement: The Forgotten Children, Ten Years On. Underneath, there is a picture of researcher Dr Michelle Peterie with a funding announcement: This project aims to investigate the rippling impacts of immigration detention in the lives of people who were detained as children. Utilising an innovative arts-based, person-centred design, and in partnership with Australia’s national human rights institution and children themselves, the project aims to generate a foundational evidence-base that advances knowledge and provides the basis for improved policy and practice. Addressing the current dearth of evidence concerning the long-term impacts of childhood detention, the project will offer critical recommendations to improve services and reduce harm, while fostering increased public awareness through a high-impact radio documentary that tells the stories of Australia’s forgotten children.

White text on light brown background: Welcome new SCHS Research Fellows! Two headshots below. On the left is Dr Juliet Bennett, a woman with short dark hair, smiling into the camera. On the right is Dr Shiva Chandra, a man with curly dark hair, also smiling into the camera. A caption at the bottom states their names.

A split image. On the left, a selfie of me (a woman in glasses, smiling slightly) in front of a promotional University of Surrey poster. On the right, a sign reading “Welcome to the Department of Sociology.”