Dr Mikkel Bruun

My research focuses on evidence-based healthcare and public health, surveillance and accountability, and the ethics and digitalisation of care. More broadly, I am interested in the theoretical and empirical foundations of anthropological enquiry and of ‘evidence-based’ practices in the sciences more generally, as well as anthropology’s contribution to healthcare improvement and policymaking.

My current research examines the role of ‘speaking up’ and ‘voice pathways’ in the NHS as part of a large interdisciplinary study conducted by The Healthcare Improvement Studies (THIS) Institute at the University of Cambridge.

Since 2013, I have carried out long-term ethnographic fieldwork on various aspects of mental healthcare in the UK, including cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness, play therapy, virtual reality therapy, and clinical psychology. My doctoral research, funded by the ESRC, looked at the rise of ‘evidence-based psychotherapy’ in the NHS and the provision of psychotherapeutic care within new regulatory and biomedical frameworks. Based on fieldwork with practitioners in educational and community-based mental health settings from 2016–2018, this research focused on NHS Talking Therapies services (formerly IAPT) and explored the scientific principles underlying ‘evidence-based’ practice in psychological therapies, including how practitioners navigate the challenges of accountability and monitoring in their everyday work.

From 2021–2024, I held a postdoctoral research position at King’s College London, where I led a research project on health surveillance within the ERC-funded project Surveillance and Moral Community: Anthropologies of Monitoring in Germany and Britain. My research examined the use of self-monitoring technologies in everyday contexts of care, with particular attention to how people engage with fitness and wellbeing apps and wearable self-tracking devices. This work developed into a broader interest in the ethics of surveillance and the increasing datafication and digitalisation of ‘health’.

Currently, my research investigates staff voice in the NHS as part of the NIHR-funded project Enhancing Voice in Healthcare Organisations based at THIS Institute. I lead ethnographic research on how staff identify and raise concerns in the NHS, and how organisations listen and respond to them. A recent focus of this work has been on questions surrounding leadership, psychological safety, and ‘speak up cultures’.

I have long been engaged in anthropological studies of mental healthcare and psychotherapy and continue to teach and conduct research in this area.

Publications

Books

• 2025: Towards an Anthropology of Psychology: Ethnographic Studies of Psychological Healthcare (ed. with R. Hutten) New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
• 2025: Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time (ed. with V. Peacock, C. Dungey and M. Shapiro). Bristol: Bristol University Press.

Articles and Book Chapters

• 2025: Introduction: Thinking Ethnographically about Psychology. In Towards an Anthropology of Psychology: Ethnographic Studies of Psychological Healthcare (eds) M.K. Bruun and R. Hutten. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
• 2025: Throwing Out the Psyche: Scientific Persuasions in British Psychotherapy. In Towards an Anthropology of Psychology: Ethnographic Studies of Psychological Healthcare (eds) M.K. Bruun and R. Hutten. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
• 2025: Watching Our Selves: Fitness and Mindfulness as Practices of Self-Monitoring in Britain. In Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time (eds) V. Peacock, M.K. Bruun, C. Dungey and M. Shapiro. Bristol: Bristol University Press.
• 2023: Mental Health. The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (ed. F. Stein).
• 2023: ‘A Factory of Therapy’: Accountability and the Monitoring of Psychological Therapy in IAPT. Anthropology & Medicine, 30(4): 313–329.
• 2023: Surveillance (with V. Peacock, C. Dungey and M. Shapiro). The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (ed. H. Nieber).

Other Publications and Media

• 2026: ‘Beyond Culture: Rethinking Anthropology and Mental Health’. The Bridging Mental Health Network. St John’s College, Cambridge.
• 2026: ‘Vita Peacock on her book, Digital Initiation Rites’ (with V. Peacock). Author Interviews, CaMP Anthropology.
• 2026: When Anthropology Meets Therapy (with R. Hutten). Edgy Ideas Podcast, Episode 104.
• 2026: ‘Ethnographic research in complex institutions: speaking up in the NHS and the contribution of an anthropological voice’. Anthropology Beyond the Academy. Department of Social Anthropology, Cambridge University.
• 2025: Under Surveillance Ep.12 (with V. Peacock and C. Dungey). Podcast by ANSUR (The Anthropology of Surveillance Network).
• 2024: ‘On the unintended effects of “evidence-based” practice in NHS Talking Therapies’ Impact in Qualitative Research Blog. Qualitative Applied Health Research Centre, King’s College London.
• 2023: Under Surveillance Ep.06 (with C. Dungey and R. Powell). Podcast by ANSUR (The Anthropology of Surveillance Network).
• 2021: ‘Anthropology, Psychology and IAPT: Some Comments on Ethnography’ Talking as Cure? Contemporary Understandings of Mental Health and Its Treatments. CRASSH, Cambridge University.
• 2021: Healthcare systems and the delivery of psychotherapy. Talking as Cure Podcast, CRASSH and Cambridge Festival.