Rui Liu

I am generally interested in subjects in relation to consumption, health and market. As many kinds of healthcare service in Sweden are increasingly digitalized, and a liberal pharmaceutical market has replaced the state monopoly Apoteket AB and its national drug supply, buying medicines is made much easier than ever before. However, the market also opens up for unauthorized provision of medicines and alternative ways of obtaining medicines. Meanwhile, the global trade of Substandard and Falsified medicines is expanding tremendously. International stakeholders have reached a consensus that they pose serious harm to public health and society. Often people who consume medicines outside the legal health care are targeted by medicine falsifiers. This background forms the departure point of my doctoral project with a working title: The making of medicines in the grey market. I examine how people’s medicine consumption praxis shape the pharmaceutical market in the Swedish context.

I hold a MA degree in Applied Cultural Analysis from Lund University, Sweden and a MA degree in Applied Linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University, China.