CfP for “Car­ing for the Pos­si­ble: In the Mean­time of Healthcare’s Data-Dri­ven Futures”
Pan­el at the Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (EASST) con­fer­ence in Krakow
Sep­tem­ber 2026. 

The dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sions is 28 Feb­ru­ary 2026. Please see below for more infor­ma­tion and sub­mit your abstract here: https://easst.net/conference/easst2026/call-for-abstracts/

P178: Car­ing for the Pos­si­ble: In the Mean­time of Healthcare’s Data-Dri­ven Futures 

Short Abstract

What hap­pens to the promis­so­ry utopias of data-dri­ven health­care “in the mean­time”? This pan­el rein­vig­o­rates STS approach­es to health­care data and tem­po­ral­i­ty through Masque­li­er & Durham’s anthro­pol­o­gy of the pos­si­ble, trac­ing how wait­ing, delay, refram­ing and repair shape care. 

Descrip­tion

In con­tem­po­rary health­care, data are rou­tine­ly invoked as instru­ments for pre­dic­tion, con­trol and rev­o­lu­tion­ary trans­for­ma­tion, promis­ing more per­son­alised, effi­cient, and evi­dence-based care. Yet between the aspi­ra­tional and the actu­al lies what Masque­li­er and Durham (2023) call the mean­time: the inde­ter­mi­nate, affec­tive, and open-end­ed space in which pos­si­ble futures are con­tin­u­al­ly nego­ti­at­ed. Draw­ing on their invi­ta­tion to an anthro­pol­o­gy of the pos­si­ble, this pan­el rein­vig­o­rates the ways STS engages empir­i­cal­ly with data prac­tices that are nei­ther ful­ly realised nor entire­ly speculative. 

Draw­ing on empir­i­cal research in social stud­ies of med­i­cine, health­care and clin­i­cal data infra­struc­tures, we explore the forms of wait­ing, adjust­ment, and impro­vi­sa­tion char­ac­ter­is­ing every­day work with data. These ‘mean­time prac­tices’ include the craft­ing of incom­plete datasets, the main­te­nance of frag­ile and some­times fic­tion­al inter­op­er­abil­i­ty, and the affec­tive labours of care that make such sys­tems func­tion. Rather than treat­ing data as sta­ble inter­me­di­aries or pre­cur­sors to pre­dic­tive futures, we approach them as sites where the pos­si­ble is con­tin­u­al­ly refig­ured — through moments of sus­pen­sion, hes­i­ta­tion, and repair. 

Bring­ing Masque­li­er and Durham’s anthro­pol­o­gy of the pos­si­ble into dia­logue with fem­i­nist STS and social stud­ies of data, we explore the con­cep­tu­al and method­olog­i­cal open­ings for study­ing health­care data as a ter­rain of ongo­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty. Such an approach invites us to notice not only what data are promised to deliv­er, but also what they hold open — in the mean­time — about how futures of health, care, and evi­dence might be made oth­er­wise. We invite papers that con­sid­er data prac­tices and care in ‘the mean­time’, engag­ing ques­tions such as: 

– What nov­el modes of atten­tion become pos­si­ble when ‘the mean­time’ of data prac­tices is our focus?
– What sorts of ‘mean­times’, of dif­fer­ent tem­po­ral­i­ties, exist among data practices?
– How do ‘data mean­times’ shape our under­stand­ings of the past and pos­si­bil­i­ties for the future of care? 

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Invi­ta­tion for open pan­el „ ‚Human­i­tar­i­an Reset,’ Tech­nop­o­l­i­tics and the Infra­struc­tures of Aid”
2026 4S Conference
Toron­to, Canada
Octo­ber 7–10, 2026

Dead­line for sub­mis­sion: April 30, 2026

4S Open Pan­el #111

Orga­niz­ers:
Roda Siad, McGill University
Alphonci­na Lya­muya, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern California

Abstract:
In 2025, the UN’s Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs called for a ‘human­i­tar­i­an reset’ amid pro­lif­er­at­ing crises, ris­ing dis­place­ment, and shrink­ing donor fund­ing. Framed as a rad­i­cal reform moment, the ‘reset’ has emerged as a dom­i­nant term for grap­pling with pro­found sec­tor-wide insti­tu­tion­al stress. Ini­tia­tives such as UN80 and the ‘reset’ are posi­tioned as oppor­tu­ni­ties to reimag­ine how aid is orga­nized and deliv­ered by stream­lin­ing coor­di­na­tion, embrac­ing antic­i­pa­to­ry action, pri­or­i­tiz­ing assis­tance, devolv­ing author­i­ty to local actors, and mobi­liz­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships to do “more with less.” Yet these reforms are not mere­ly neu­tral or tech­ni­cal. They rep­re­sent a recon­fig­u­ra­tion of pow­er with­in human­i­tar­i­an sys­tems, enact­ed through the reset as a tech­no-polit­i­cal project.
We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of human­i­tar­i­an­ism and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies to exam­ine the reset, its promis­es, under­ly­ing assump­tions, and how it is shaped by, and pro­duc­tive of, technopow­er. We ask: how are aid infra­struc­tures, includ­ing data gov­er­nance sys­tems, cash deliv­ery plat­forms, fore­cast­ing tools, pri­or­i­tized aid mech­a­nisms, and account­abil­i­ty frame­works, being redesigned under con­di­tions of aus­ter­i­ty and urgency? What sociotech­ni­cal imag­i­nar­ies shape reforms pro­posed under the reset, and how are they entan­gled with ideas of effi­cien­cy, exper­tise, inno­va­tion, mar­ket log­ics, and new forms of pub­lic-pri­vate author­i­ty? How do calls to “shift pow­er clos­er to com­mu­ni­ties” inter­sect with expand­ing tech­no­log­i­cal medi­a­tion and data-inten­sive sys­tems that may simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enable and under­mine local agency?
This pan­el fore­grounds the reset as an ongo­ing, con­test­ed process rather than a set­tled reform agen­da. Con­tri­bu­tions may engage empir­i­cal­ly, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, or con­cep­tu­al­ly with top­ics includ­ing local­iza­tion and account­abil­i­ty, antic­i­pa­to­ry action and ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, pro­tec­tion issues, human­i­tar­i­an-cor­po­rate col­lab­o­ra­tion, activism, and advo­ca­cy under shrink­ing human­i­tar­i­an foot­prints. We wel­come sub­mis­sions explor­ing ten­sions between effi­cien­cy and care, inno­va­tion and jus­tice, decen­tral­iza­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty-shift­ing, and tech­no­crat­ic exper­tise and lived experiences.

Sub­mis­sion guide­lines and addi­tion­al pan­el details (pan­el #111) can be found here.

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