Peter Steggals

Peter Steggals is a UK-based Sociologist affiliated with Newcastle University. He focuses on the sociocultural and political dimensions of mental distress and disorder. He uses a broadly trans-disciplinary approach drawing on social psychology and anthropology, as well as cultural sociology and social theory, to analyse the semiotic dimension of psychosocial patterns of psychopathology and interpret them in their sociocultural, historical and political context.

After working in Forensic Psychology for the Prison Service and acting as a suicide and self-harm risk assessor, Steggals decided to research nonsuicidal self-injury in the wider population and from a sociological perspective. He secured an ESRC 1+3 grant and pursued an MA and PhD on this topic, eventually publishing his thesis as 'Making Sense of Self-Harm: The Cultural Meaning and Social Context of Nonsuicidal Self-Injury' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Steggals is currently working on a second book that applies the approach he has developed for self-injury to the whole range of psychosocial psychopathology. This is due to be published by Routledge in 2025.