This seminar will report on the findings of the CoLAB qualitative study which aimed to examine the multiple social, material and temporal effects of extended-release buprenorphine depot (BUP-XR) treatment in clients’ lives, among a group of participants receiving BUP-XR in Australia, and consider the situated potentials of these new opioid agonist treatment technologies. In particular, we will consider how the shift from daily to monthly dosing altered how opioid agonist treatment was experienced, reconfigured participants’ relationship to treatment, and affected the temporal patterns of participants’ lives. Informed by sociological approaches which attend to the multiple effects of novel health intervention technologies as they are put to use and made to work in sites of implementation practice, this seminar will consider how the promise of new treatment technologies entangles with their social and material environments and clients’ lives. As BUP-XR treatment gains traction internationally, a key consideration for services will be how choice, social connection, and care can be maintained, and how clients can be supported to adjust to what is felt to be a new normal.

About the speaker

Kari Lancaster is Scientia Associate Professor at the Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW, and Honorary Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She leads a program of qualitative research focused on the development of critical approaches to the study of evidence-making practices, implementation science and intervention translations in health, including examining experiences and effects of treatment and testing technologies, especially in relation to drugs, hepatitis C, HIV and Covid-19. Kari is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Science, Technology & Human Values (from 2022) and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Drug Policy.