Joshua J Mason

I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociology with expertise in medical sociology, the sociology of health and illness, and cultural sociology. Prior to enrolling at UC Davis, I attended UC Merced and staffed a member of congress for roughly three years. During that period of my life, I became particularly interested in the way our public welfare systems serve (and often fail to serve) people with severe mental health disorders. In my early years as a graduate student, I was inspired to learn more about the political and structural factors which have prevented the US from providing adequate systems of mental health care for its people. My interests eventually formed into the research agenda that has guided my thesis and dissertation work.

Specifically, my current work can best be summarized as a "sociology of psychedelic-assisted therapy." For many patients, psychedelic drugs provide miraculous healing experiences, drastically alleviating symptoms of disorder or even curing them altogether. For others, psychedelics have little impact or provide relief that is comparably durable to other common pharmaceutical treatments. My dissertation work interrogates how the social and cultural structures of medicine and science, as well as the cultural backgrounds of patients and practitioners, coalesce and ultimately shape the interpretative contents and outcomes of patients' psychedelic experiences in therapy settings. My dissertation work is a large-scale in-depth interview project with patients and practitioners of psychedelic-assisted therapy which seeks to understand how our common capacities for transcendental experiences are being medicalized, how and why practitioners conform to or resist the process of medicalizing such culturally nuanced drugs, and how patient-therapist relationships are affected by the cultural identities both parties bring with them into the therapeutic encounter. Many anticipate the field of psychedelic-assisted therapy will become a monolithic presence in the global mental health market in the coming years, and I hope my work will be among the first sociologically oriented publications to help sensitize the public and practitioners to the importance of providing culturally competent care in therapeutic contexts. If you'd like to know more about my research, please feel free to reach out. 

If you are an incoming student of mine or are simply interested in learning about my pedagogical orientation, you will likely see in the classroom that my love of teaching is evident in all of the content I present, as well as the manner of its presentation. I genuinely approach every lecture I present as an opportunity to make students as passionate about the content I teach as I am, as I know how impactful such passion can be to instill the long-term love for learning. I consider myself very approachable and encourage you to attend office hours or schedule a meeting if you'd like to know more about my work in the classroom.