Shoshana Lauter is an MPhil/PhD candidate within the Department of Health Policy and a recipient of the NIHR School for Social Care Research Studentship at CPEC. She conducts ethnographic research on the relationship between trauma-related psychiatric diagnosis and financial tenability amongst social care users.

Shoshana's interests have developed from extensive study of medical sociology and class theory. She has researched and worked in various public health settings, including a major New York City hospital emergency room, a reproductive health and family planning clinic, and affordable public housing. Within these spaces, she critically analyses the cyclical relationship between poverty, mental illness, psychiatric practices, and social support use. 

Shoshana received her BA in Sociology at Barnard College, Columbia University, in 2018 (senior thesis: The New Chronic Condition: An Observation of the Medicalization of Poverty in Urban Emergent Care). She received her MPhil in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2019 (dissertation: From Diagnosis to Qualifier: A Study on Trauma- and Stressor-Related Psychiatric Disorders and Access to Services in New York’s Inner City).