Profile
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher specialising in critical health policy, medical sociology, qualitative methods, and women's health. My work interrogates how health policies are constructed and operationalised, and how they shape access, inequality, and lived experience in practice. I am currently undertaking Wellcome Trust-funded postdoctoral research on GLP-1 weight-loss injections.
From March-May 2026, I am a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Sociology, Durham University, UK.
During my PhD, funded by the Wellcome Trust Health Data In Practice Doctoral Training Programme at Queen Mary University of London, I conducted a critical policy analysis of NHS-funded In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) access restrictions in England. Drawing on Foucauldian theory and Carol Bacchi's 'What is the Problem Represented to Be?' framework, my research examined how eligibility criteria, particularly those related to BMI, produce and legitimise inequalities in access to reproductive care. This work surfaces the moral and political assumptions embedded within clinical policy and offers a sustained critique of evidence-based policymaking as a neutral enterprise.
I have published in journals including BMC Reproductive Health and Critical Policy Studies, written for public audiences in New Scientist and Undark, and submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament Food, Diet and Obesity Committee. I have presented my work at conferences across the UK, Europe, and the USA, and in 2025 I chaired and organised a panel on post-structural policy analysis at the 7th International Public Policy Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Research
Research Interests:
My research asks how health policies come to look the way they do, whose knowledge they privilege, and what harms they produce. I work across the following areas:
- Critical and interpretive policy analysis, with a focus on how policy problems are produced and what assumptions go unexamined
- Feminist and poststructuralist theory, including Foucauldian approaches to power, risk, and the governance of bodies
- Reproductive health and fertility policy, particularly NHS IVF access and BMI-based eligibility restrictions
- Weight stigma in healthcare, spanning clinical encounters, policy design, and public discourse
- GLP-1 medications and emerging obesity policy, examining how new pharmacological tools are reshaping how ‘obesity' is understood and managed
Publications
Hickman, M.E. and Muir, R [joint first authorship]. (2025) 'Integrating co-analysis and researcher reflexivity into Bacchi's "what is the problem represented to be?" framework: A cervical screening case study', Critical Policy Studies. Published online 23 September 2025. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2025.2561142
Muir, R. and Hawking, M. (2024) 'How do BMI-restrictive policies impact women seeking NHS-funded IVF in the United Kingdom? A qualitative analysis of online forum discussions', Reproductive Health, 21(152). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-024-01891-1
Thygesen, J.H., Presman, A., Harju-Seppänen, J., Irizar, H., Jones, R., Kuchenbaecker, K., Lin, K., Alizadeh, B.Z., Austin-Zimmerman, I., Bartels-Velthuis, A., Bhat, A., Bruggeman, R., Cahn, W., Calafato, S., Crespo-Facorro, B., de Haan, L., de Zwarte, S.M.C., Di Forti, M., Díez-Revuelta, Á., Hall, J., Hall, M.H., Iyegbe, C., Jablensky, A., Kahn, R., Kalaydjieva, L., Kravariti, E., Lawrie, S., Luykx, J.J., Mata, I., McDonald, C., McIntosh, A.M., McQuillin, A., Muir, R. et al. (2021) 'Genetic copy number variants, cognition and psychosis: a meta-analysis and a family study', Molecular Psychiatry, 26(9), pp. 5307–5319. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-0820-7
Muir, R., Diot, A. and Poulton, J. (2016) 'Mitochondrial content is central to nuclear gene expression: Profound implications for human health', BioEssays, 38(2), pp. 150–156. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201500105