Puér­pera UK Book Launch — Deb­o­rah Elen­ter in Con­ver­sa­tion with Helen Knowles
Fri­day 27 March 2026, 5.00–6.30pm (arrivals from 5pm)
Women’s Art Library, Spe­cial Collections
Goldsmiths
Uni­ver­si­ty of London
New Cross, SE14 6NW London

Free (book­ing essential)

Book­ing site

ABOUT THIS EVENT

Join us for the UK launch of Puér­pera, a pow­er­ful pho­to­book by Mon­te­v­ideo-born visu­al artist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and doula Deb­o­rah Elen­ter, pub­lished by the Cen­tro de Fotografía de Montevideo.

Since 2015, Elen­ter has been doc­u­ment­ing the expe­ri­ences of peo­ple giv­ing birth — work that con­fronts the his­tor­i­cal invis­i­bil­i­ty of child­birth in con­tem­po­rary art, reclaim­ing it as a vital, polit­i­cal and col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence. Under her lens, the birthing room becomes a polit­i­cal space, and the act of birth part of the col­lec­tive strug­gle of fem­i­nism. Hav­ing launched at La Fábri­ca Book­store in Madrid and at Košice Uni­ver­si­ty in Slo­va­kia, we are hon­oured to host the UK edi­tion at the Women’s Art Library.

The evening will fea­ture a con­ver­sa­tion between Deb­o­rah Elen­ter and Helen Knowles, Direc­tor and Cura­tor of the Birth Rites Col­lec­tion, chaired by Dr Althea Greenan, Cura­tor of the Women’s Art Library. The dis­cus­sion will explore birth, pho­tog­ra­phy, the body and the pol­i­tics of mak­ing vis­i­ble what has long been ren­dered invisible.

As part of this event, Deb­o­rah Elen­ter has gen­er­ous­ly donat­ed an edi­tion of Puér­pera along­side a framed pho­to­graph­ic work to the Birth Rites Col­lec­tion, and a fur­ther copy of the pho­to­book to the Women’s Art Library. In turn, the Birth Rites Col­lec­tion will gift a selec­tion of his­tor­i­cal pam­phlets, fliers and doc­u­men­ta­tion of its work since 2009 to the Women’s Art Library — a fit­ting exchange between two col­lec­tions com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing and mak­ing vis­i­ble the expe­ri­ences of women.

Books will be avail­able for pur­chase and sign­ing after the talk.

SPEAKER BIOS

Deb­o­rah Elen­ter is a Mon­te­v­ideo-born visu­al artist, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and doula. Since 2015 she has doc­u­ment­ed over 150 births, pro­duc­ing inti­mate and unflinch­ing images that reclaim child­birth as a vital, polit­i­cal and col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence. Her project Puér­pera has been exhib­it­ed at the Uruguayan Con­tem­po­rary Art Muse­um, Espa­cio de Arte Con­tem­porá­neo, and Hipere­s­pa­cio in Mon­te­v­ideo, and received inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion includ­ing awards from Uruguay’s Direc­ción Nacional de Cul­tura and the Fun­dación Itaú Cul­tur­al. Her pho­to­book Puér­pera, pub­lished by the Cen­tro de Fotografía de Mon­te­v­ideo, launched in 2025. Along­side her pho­to­graph­ic prac­tice, Elen­ter col­lab­o­rates on Uruguay’s pro­posed Dig­ni­fied Birth legislation.

Dr Althea Greenan is Cura­tor of the Women’s Art Library at Gold­smiths, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don. She has worked with the col­lec­tion since 1989, first as a vol­un­teer with the Women Artists’ Slide Library and then as cura­tor when the col­lec­tion was gift­ed to Gold­smiths in 2002. Her work posi­tions the archive in con­tem­po­rary prac­tice, sup­port­ing artists and researchers in devel­op­ing new projects from its hold­ings. She has writ­ten wide­ly on women’s art prac­tice and fem­i­nist archiv­ing, pub­lish­ing in aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals, art mag­a­zines and edit­ed vol­umes. She has spo­ken at the Roy­al Acad­e­my, CCA Glas­gow, Som­er­set House and internationally.

Helen Knowles is a British artist, film­mak­er and cura­tor, and Direc­tor of the Birth Rites Col­lec­tion — the only con­tem­po­rary art col­lec­tion inter­na­tion­al­ly ded­i­cat­ed to child­birth and mater­nal expe­ri­ence. Found­ed in 2008, the col­lec­tion com­pris­es over 120 art­works by artists includ­ing Judy Chica­go, Himali Singh Soin, and Court­ney Con­rad. Knowles’s own work has been exhib­it­ed at the Mori Art Muse­um, ZKM Karl­sruhe, Ars Elec­tron­i­ca, Zablu­dow­icz Col­lec­tion and Kun­sthaus Graz, and is held by the Whit­worth, Tate, and the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um. She was award­ed a PhD from Northum­bria Uni­ver­si­ty in 2025.

ABOUT THE BIRTH RITES COLLECTION

The Birth Rites Col­lec­tion is the only con­tem­po­rary art col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to child­birth, repro­duc­tion and mater­nal expe­ri­ence in the world. Found­ed in 2008 by artist and cura­tor Helen Knowles, it com­pris­es over 120 works by artists includ­ing Judy Chica­go, Himali Singh Soin, Anna Per­ach, Deb­o­rah Elen­ter, and Court­ney Con­rad. The col­lec­tion has been host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sal­ford (2013–2017), King’s Col­lege Lon­don (2017–2021) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent (2022–2026), with exhi­bi­tion part­ner­ships at the Whit­worth Art Gallery, IKON and Leeds City Art Gallery. Since 2019, the col­lec­tion has run an annu­al Sum­mer School for artists, mid­wives and researchers. birthritescollection.org.uk

ALSO

Can’t make Fri­day 27th? Deb­o­rah will also be at The Pho­to­book Cafe on Mon­day 30 March, 6–7.30pm for a relaxed, infor­mal book sign­ing. Free — book sep­a­rate­ly via Eventbrite.

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CfP: „Liv­ing with Inflam­ma­tion: Inquiry into the Ontol­ogy and Pol­i­tics of Flammability”
Event Date: 9. 4. 2026 – 10. 4. 2026

Time and Place of Event: Aca­d­e­m­ic Con­fer­ence Cen­ter, Prague, Czech Republic

Orga­niz­ers: Tereza Stöck­elová and Hana Pork­er­tová (Insti­tute of Soci­ol­o­gy of the Czech Acad­e­my of Sci­ences) and Léa Per­raudin (Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin)

Keynotes: Har­ris Solomon (Duke Uni­ver­si­ty) and Andrea Ford (Uni­ver­si­ty of Edinburgh)

In con­tem­po­rary bio­med­i­cine, inflam­ma­tion has emerged as a cen­tral con­cept in under­stand­ing health and dis­ease. It is increas­ing­ly stud­ied as a phys­i­o­log­i­cal process under­ly­ing a wide array of conditions—from obe­si­ty and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease to neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders such as Alzheimer’s, as well as depres­sion and can­cer (Fur­man et al., 2019; Medzhi­tov, 2008). While acute inflammation—a tar­get­ed response to spe­cif­ic stres­sors or injury—is a vital and pro­tec­tive func­tion of the immune sys­tem, chron­ic low-grade inflam­ma­tion is now rec­og­nized as a source of long-term harm.

Con­sid­er­ing these devel­op­ments, Han­nah Lan­deck­er (2024) argues that inflam­ma­tion research has pro­found impli­ca­tions for under­stand­ing how soci­ety “gets under the skin.” She observes that “the inflam­ma­to­ry body emerg­ing from the stud­ies of adi­pos­i­ty and dia­betes is pro­duced by metab­o­liz­ing mate­r­i­al and psy­choso­cial con­di­tions.” In this way, social inequal­i­ties man­i­fest as inflam­ma­to­ry states—not as down­stream con­se­quences but as upstream con­di­tions of health disparities.

Atten­tion to inflam­ma­tion may, in turn, illu­mi­nate the intri­cate entan­gle­ments of bod­ies, ecolo­gies, and mate­r­i­al infra­struc­tures, draw­ing crit­i­cal atten­tion to the creep­ing con­di­tions of expo­sure, con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, and tox­i­c­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with anthro­pogenic inter­fer­ence (Alaimo, 2016; Chen, 2012; Libo­iron, 2021; Mur­phy, 2017; Naddaf, 2025; Shotwell, 2016). Inflam­ma­bil­i­ty may also serve as a pro­duc­tive lens for analysing the reac­tive (mal)functions of mate­r­i­al objects with­in tech­no­log­i­cal systems—whether solar bat­ter­ies, urban infra­struc­tures, or post-indus­tri­al land­scapes. While flam­ing com­bus­tion is a high-tem­per­a­ture chem­i­cal reac­tion prone to esca­lat­ing momen­tum, the cold­er burn and slow spread of latent, smoul­der­ing process­es invite reflec­tion on their tem­po­ral and mate­r­i­al thresh­olds (Per­raudin 2025).

Draw­ing on STS stud­ies of social topol­o­gy (de Laet & Mol, 2000; Mol & Law, 1994; Law & Sin­gle­ton, 2005), Pork­er­tová and Stöck­elová (2025) recent­ly intro­duced the notion of the inflam­ma­ble object to describe a spe­cif­ic capac­i­ty to “catch fire”: such objects embody both the poten­tial to erupt and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of frag­ile con­trol that pre­vents irre­versible dam­age. Inflam­ma­bil­i­ty is thus nei­ther ful­ly elim­inable; rather, it may serve as a har­bin­ger of sys­temic dis­tur­bance and com­plex­i­ty. The issue, then, is not one of erad­i­ca­tion but, to para­phrase Har­away (2016), of find­ing ways to live with the smoul­der­ing trouble.

We invite papers that exam­ine inflam­ma­to­ry or inflam­ma­ble objects across diverse set­tings, to explore the ana­lyt­i­cal pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of inflam­ma­tion (as a con­di­tion), flam­ma­bil­i­ty (as a qual­i­ty), and smoul­der­ing (as a process). How do these con­cepts relate, over­lap, or intra-sect with­in bod­ies, mate­ri­als, and ecosys­tems? Our aim is to ignite—and keep smouldering—a sus­tained con­ver­sa­tion that will cul­mi­nate in a spe­cial jour­nal issue.

Dead­line for abstracts (max. 300 words): 23 Jan­u­ary 2026

Sub­mit pro­pos­als to: hana.porkertova@soc.cas.cz

Select­ed par­tic­i­pants will be expect­ed to sub­mit a 3,000-word draft paper by 31 March 2026.

Papers will be shared with all par­tic­i­pants pri­or to the work­shop, and each paper will be assigned a discussant.
https://www.soc.cas.cz/en/events/conferences/living-with-inflammation-inquiry-into-the-ontology-and-politics-of-flammability

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One-day sym­po­sium on „Long Covid and Soci­ety” (in-per­son and virtually)

April 20, 2026
Colum­bia University 

The con­ver­sa­tion fea­tures soci­ol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans, anthro­pol­o­gists, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies schol­ars, patient advo­cates, clin­i­cians, and sci­en­tists work­ing around issues relat­ed to Long Covid’s impact on social inequal­i­ties. We will also fea­ture researchers from Brazil and France to pro­vide glob­al per­spec­tives on Long Covid.

Speak­ers for the day include Lar­ry Au, JD Davids, Abi­gail Dumes, Gil Eyal, Emi­ly Lim Rogers, Emi­ly Menden­hall, David Scales, Meli­na Sher­man, Pierre Robic­quet, Andre Luiz Sica de Cam­pos, Renan Gonçalves Leonel da Sil­va, Ilana Löwy, Julia Moore Vogel, and more.

Learn more and reg­is­ter: https://longcov.id/society

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