Veranstaltungskalender

VORTRAGSREIHE DES INSTITUTS FÜR GESCHICHTE UND ETHIK DER MEDIZIN HEIDELBERG IM WINTERSEMESTER 2025/2026
Pro­fes­sion­al­ität und pro­fes­sionelle Hal­tung in der Medi­zin: His­torische und ethis­che Perspektiven

Was macht gute Ärztin­nen und Ärzte aus? Dem Ide­al nach erschöpft sich Pro­fes­sion­al­ität nicht in fach­lich­er Exzel­lenz, son­dern umfasst Hal­tung, Selb­stre­flex­ion und einen part­ner­schaftlichen Umgang mit Patient:innen. Die Vor­tragsrei­he beleuchtet diese Fra­gen aus eth­nol­o­gis­ch­er, his­torisch­er und medi­zinis­ch­er Per­spek­tive. Die Beiträge zeigen, wie vielfältig und zugle­ich her­aus­fordernd Pro­fes­sion­al­ität ver­standen wer­den kann: Sei es im Prozess der Iden­tität­sen­twick­lung von Studieren­den, im Umgang mit dem toten Kör­p­er im Prä­pari­erkurs, in der Zusam­me­nar­beit mit Genesungsbegleiter:innen in der Psy­chi­a­trie oder in den Patien­ten­bildern des 20. Jahrhun­derts. Ger­ade die his­torischen Beispiele verdeut­lichen, dass Vorstel­lun­gen ärztlich­er Pro­fes­sion­al­ität und Leit­bilder keineswegs uni­versell gültig sind, son­dern in hohem Maße kontin­gent und dem gesellschaftlichen Wan­del unter­wor­fen. Damit rückt die Rei­he die Verän­der­barkeit und Vielschichtigkeit pro­fes­sioneller Hal­tung in den Mit­telpunkt: Pro­fes­sion­al­ität erscheint nicht als fest­gelegtes Ide­al, son­dern als Aushand­lung­sprozess zwis­chen Wis­senschaft und Erfahrung, zwis­chen Nähe und Dis­tanz, zwis­chen den Erwartun­gen von Patient:innen und den Selb­st­bildern der Ärzt:innen. Sie lädt dazu ein, die Medi­zin als ein Feld zu ver­ste­hen, das sich ständig neu erfind­et – im Span­nungs­feld von Geschichte, Ethik und Gegenwart.

Online per Zoom: https://eu02web.zoom‑x.de/j/68528452549?pwd=aEJvZHlTT01PQ0NFVlRkY09jSVFHZz09.

Pro­gramm

10.02.2026 / 18.15 Uhr
Vom Men­schen­ma­te­r­i­al zum mündi­gen Patient? Patien­ten­bilder im Kon­text der (De)Professionalisierung der Ärzteschaft im lan­gen 20. Jahrhundert
Dr. Christoph Schwamm
Insti­tut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medi­zin, Uni­ver­sität Heidelberg

Down­load Fly­er: https://t1p.de/xq4fc
Kontakt

Insti­tut für Geschichte und Ethik der Medizin
Ruprecht-Karls-Uni­ver­sität Heidelberg
Im Neuen­heimer Feld 327
69120 Heidelberg

Tele­fon: 06221 54–8212
E‑Mail: christoph.schwamm@histmed.uni-heidelberg.de

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Call for Abstracts for the con­fer­ence „From Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: New Sce­nar­ios for Health and Medicine”

Impor­tant Dates

- Dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sion: 30 Novem­ber 2025
– Noti­fi­ca­tion of out­comes: 15 Decem­ber 2025
– Con­fer­ence: 12–13 Feb­ru­ary 2026
– Venue: Tren­to, Italy

The increas­ing dif­fu­sion of tech­nolo­gies sup­port­ing diag­no­sis, treat­ment, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and admin­is­tra­tive man­age­ment in health­care is accom­pa­nied by a com­plex set of socio-tech­ni­cal expec­ta­tions, which fore­shad­ow pro­found trans­for­ma­tions in clin­i­cal prac­tice and organ­i­sa­tion­al mod­els of ser­vices, with the promise of more inte­grat­ed, effi­cient, and sus­tain­able socio san­i­tary sys­tems. Although expec­ta­tions of trans­for­ma­tion cycli­cal­ly accom­pa­ny every new „next big thing”; tech­no-sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly pre­sent­ed as rev­o­lu­tion­ary for the world of care, those that have emerged in recent years appear qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent, per­va­sive­ly inter­twined with social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal dynam­ics that ampli­fy their poten­tial impact. Expec­ta­tions regard­ing the appli­ca­tion of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) to med­i­cine, already present since the 1960s, now appear more con­crete due to its increas­ing dif­fu­sion in mul­ti­ple areas of social life.

The shared per­cep­tion that cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions are struc­tur­al and not tem­po­rary can exert a drag effect, re ignit­ing inter­est in inno­va­tions that pre­vi­ous­ly remained mar­gin­al. Tech­nolo­gies such as blockchain for data man­age­ment or robot­ics in sur­gi­cal and reha­bil­i­ta­tive fields, which had not pre­vi­ous­ly achieved full inte­gra­tion, could thus find new appli­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, con­tribut­ing to fur­ther dynam­ics of change in the health­care sec­tor. The promis­es of change are embed­ded with­in a trans­form­ing frame­work. On the one hand, the adop­tion of AI tools moves in par­tial con­ti­nu­ity with pre-exist­ing health­care dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion process­es (e.g., tele­care), whose adop­tion seems to have spread more rapid­ly as a con­se­quence of the pan­dem­ic cri­sis. Com­pared to these changes, how­ev­er, AI is not a sim­ple exten­sion of already known process­es but intro­duces new log­ics and issues that require crit­i­cal re-exam­i­na­tion. On the oth­er hand, the most recent tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions are called to con­front a changed eco­nom­ic land­scape (e.g., pro­gres­sive reduc­tion of pub­lic spend­ing to sup­port health ser­vices), ide­o­log­i­cal frame­work (e.g., health as an indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty of patients), pro­fes­sion­al con­text (e.g., hyper- spe­cial­i­sa­tion, lia­bil­i­ty, and pro­fes­sion­al pro­file enhance­ment), and increas­ing­ly com­plex pol­i­cy envi­ron­ment (e.g., reforms of nation­al health poli­cies) that are the result of struc­tur­al changes in society.

The con­fer­ence, joint­ly organ­ised by the Ital­ian Soci­o­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (AIS – Soci­ol­o­gy of Health and Med­i­cine Sec­tion) and the Ital­ian Soci­ety for Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies (STS Italia), aims to fos­ter dia­logue between two sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties that, from com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives, con­tribute to the crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of process­es inter­twin­ing health, med­i­cine, and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. While shar­ing numer­ous the­o­ret­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal affini­ties, the soci­ol­o­gy of health and med­i­cine has tra­di­tion­al­ly focused on the social, cul­tur­al, and eth­i­cal dimen­sions of ill­ness, care prac­tices, and health poli­cies, inves­ti­gat­ing themes such as inequal­i­ties, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of health, and the role of health­care pro­fes­sions and organ­i­sa­tions. Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies, instead, have focused more on the analy­sis of co-pro­duc­tion process­es between sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and soci­ety, explor­ing how tech­nolo­gies are designed, adopt­ed, and reg­u­lat­ed, and how they, in turn, shape social prac­tices and insti­tu­tion­al con­fig­u­ra­tions. The com­ple­men­tar­i­ty between these two per­spec­tives will enrich the col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of how emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are trans­form­ing not only clin­i­cal prac­tice but also expe­ri­ences of ill­ness and health, rela­tion­ships between patients and pro­fes­sion­als, and pub­lic policies.

In line with a strong­ly inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach, the con­fer­ence is open to con­tri­bu­tions from soci­ol­o­gy, ethics, law, health eco­nom­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, med­i­cine, and infor­ma­tion engineering.

We invite the sub­mis­sion of abstracts explor­ing a wide range of top­ics, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to:

- Infra­struc­tur­ing and gov­er­nance of health­care technologies
– Health data man­age­ment policies
– Health poli­cies and emerg­ing technologies
– Health­care poli­cies and regulation
– Telemed­i­cine, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, and new challenges
– Doc­tor-patient rela­tion­ship in the dig­i­tal era
– Ethics and AI in healthcare
– Robot­ics in healthcare
– Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion and health inequalities
– Pub­lic per­cep­tions and social accep­tance of emerg­ing health­care technologies
– Process­es of co-con­struc­tion of health, ill­ness, and technology

Abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words in length and must be sub­mit­ted by 30 Novem­ber 2025 using the pro­vid­ed form.
Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­fer­ence is open to audi­tors only and does not require reg­is­tra­tion fees. All expens­es, includ­ing meals, are the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the participants.

Organ­is­ing Committee
Alber­to Ardis­sone (Uni­ver­si­ty of Mac­er­a­ta), Flavia Atzori (Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Marche), Ste­fano Crabu (Uni­ver­si­ty of Pad­ua), Mar­ta Gib­in (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna), Francesco Miele (Uni­ver­si­ty of Tri­este), Veron­i­ca Moret­ti (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna), Enri­co Maria Piras (Bruno Kessler Foun­da­tion), Bar­bara Sena (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bergamo)

For any infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Enri­co Maria Piras at piras@fbk.eu.

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Bod­ies, Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, Empowerment
Symposium
Orgniz­ers: Aman­da Lubit, Mile­na Williamson, and Maruš­ka Svašek.
Time: Fri­day 6 March 2026
Place: Wolf­son Lec­ture The­atre, Sea­mus Heaney Cen­tre, 38–40 Uni­ver­si­ty Road, Belfast

Call for Con­tri­bu­tions (dead­line: 15 Jan 2026)

Cen­tre for Cre­ative Ethnog­ra­phy, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sea­mus Heaney Cen­tre, invites aca­d­e­mics, stu­dents, poets and oth­ers to par­tic­i­pate in a one-day, in-per­son sym­po­sium. The objec­tive is to employ cre­ative ethnog­ra­phy, poet­ry, and oth­er modes of artis­tic explo­ration to explore how inequal­i­ties relat­ed to inter­sec­tion­al­i­ties of gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, race, reli­gion, class, age, and/or dis­abil­i­ty are

– embod­ied and experienced
– embed­ded in wider soci­etal structures
– politi­cised and resisted

Bod­ies: We invite sub­mis­sions that inves­ti­gate phys­i­cal­i­ty, aging, mor­tal­i­ty, emo­tion­al inter­ac­tion, indi­vid­ual bod­ies and body politics.

Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties: Relat­ed ques­tions around inequal­i­ties, oppres­sion, inter­de­pen­dence, and expe­ri­ences of dis­em­pow­er­ment and trau­ma are high­ly relevant.

Empow­er­ment: We also wel­come con­tri­bu­tions that exam­ine broad­er themes of bod­i­ly agency, resis­tance, and transformation.

Con­trib­u­tors might sim­i­lar­ly con­sid­er rela­tion­ships between artist’s bod­ies and bod­ies of work, explor­ing how con­crete works exist in space, cul­ture and soci­ety. Anoth­er rel­e­vant ques­tion is how cre­ative prac­tice can make us as cre­ators both vul­ner­a­ble and empow­ered. What are the com­pli­ca­tions of try­ing to express

- an indi­vid­ual experience

“The days are get­ting longer now, how­ev­er many of them / I have left. / And the pen­cil I am writ­ing this with, old as it is, will eas­i­ly / out­last their end.” –Cia­ran Carson’s “Claude Mon­et, Artist’s Gar­den at Vétheuil, 1880)

- a col­lec­tive experience

(“All atti­tudes, all the shape­li­ness, all the belong­ings of my or your body or of any one’s body” –Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric”)

We encour­age, but do not require, sub­mis­sions that incor­po­rate a per­for­ma­tive ele­ment. Per­for­mances can include, but are not lim­it­ed to, read­ings, dance, visu­al arts and crafts, sound, and film.

FORMAT: Each con­trib­u­tor will have up to 15 min­utes for their pre­sen­ta­tion, demon­stra­tion and/or per­for­mance. If you wish to con­tribute, please send a 200-word abstract and a 100-word bio to CFCE@qub.ac.uk by Jan­u­ary 15, 2025. Please spec­i­fy the for­mat of your con­tri­bu­tion. If you are doing a demon­stra­tion and/or per­for­mance please let us know what that will involve.

KEYNOTE: Bebe Ashley

Bebe lives in North­ern Ire­land. Her debut col­lec­tion Gold Light Shin­ing (Ban­shee Press) was select­ed for Read Mór in 2022. In 2023, Bebe received the Ivan Juritz Prize for Cre­ative Exper­i­ment (Text) for work which was lat­er pub­lished in her sec­ond poet­ry col­lec­tion Har­bour Doubts. In 2024, Bebe received a Cre­ative Prac­ti­tion­er Bur­sary from Belfast City Coun­cil, and in 2025, received the British Coun­cil Fel­low­ship for Bun­danon, Aus­tralia. For more details, please see here: http://www.bebe-ashley.com/

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Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence „For a Bet­ter Pub­lic Health and Health­care: Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Solutions”
Mon­te­ca­ti­ni Terme (Italy)
13–15 March 2026

Good Health and Well-being is one of the 17 UN Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, close­ly inter­con­nect­ed with social chal­lenges, such as pover­ty and inequal­i­ty. Avoid­able poor health and inequal­i­ties in health and access to health­care per­sist across all coun­tries, while health­care costs con­tin­ue to rise. This con­fer­ence aims to stim­u­late mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary think­ing and action to devel­op solu­tions that grasp the oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, while tack­ling the socio-eco­nom­ic deter­mi­nants of health and the effects of envi­ron­men­tal challenges.

Sus­tain­able health­care solu­tions and effec­tive pub­lic health deliv­ery require more than just stat­ed com­mit­ments — they demand con­crete action, inno­v­a­tive think­ing and sus­tained col­lab­o­ra­tion across sec­tors to enable a good patient expe­ri­ence and ensure effi­cient and sus­tain­able health ser­vices. This Inter­na­tion­al Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Con­fer­ence will bring togeth­er actors in the inter­con­nect­ed fields of pub­lic health, health care and envi­ron­ment to inves­ti­gate the state of health poli­cies and ser­vices across dif­fer­ent fields.
A key objec­tive is to devel­op syn­er­gies between aca­d­e­m­ic research, the man­age­ment of the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment, pub­lic health deliv­ery, health providers, pub­lic and pri­vate investors and pol­i­cy mak­ers. The aim is to stim­u­late an inte­grat­ed approach to address both imme­di­ate chal­lenges and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals, improv­ing effi­cien­cy, resilience and ser­vice acces­si­bil­i­ty to all com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, while pro­mot­ing a greater focus on reduc­ing demand upstream through appro­pri­ate pre­ven­tive approach­es in the phys­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and psy­choso­cial environment.

The Con­fer­ence will devel­op through work­shops and ple­nary ses­sions focused on three core areas and the com­ple­men­tary ways in which they impact the effi­cien­cy and resilience of pub­lic health poli­cies and health­care sys­tems, and people’s health and well­be­ing in a holis­tic sense. 

The three inter­con­nect­ed core areas are:
(1) Tack­ling Sys­temic Health­care Costs and Health­care Access;
(2) Pub­lic Health and the Phys­i­cal and Socio-eco­nom­ic Environment;
(3) Dig­i­tal Health Inno­va­tion and Respon­si­ble AI in Health Systems.

Fur­ther Details and Updates are avail­able at: Inter­na­tion­al Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Health Con­fer­ence 2026 | inter­na­tion­al urban sym­po­sium – ius

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Sym­po­sium “Assist­ed Repro­duc­tive Tech­nol­o­gy and Social Sci­ences: Think­ing about what’s miss­ing. Invent­ing possibilities”
May 29, 2026
Cam­pus Con­dorcet (Aubervil­liers, France)

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions from all fields of the social sci­ences address­ing the gaps, lim­its, and unmet needs in ART, as well as method­olog­i­cal and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es to explore them.

Please note that pre­sen­ta­tions will take place on-site only.

Dead­line for pro­pos­als: Decem­ber 1, 2025
Email: parcours2026@gmail.com
Abstract length: approx. 300 words (noti­fi­ca­tion by end of December)

The full call for papers can be found below

CfP Symposium_PARCOURS

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Inter­na­tion­al sym­po­sium Repro­duc­tive Health in Frag­ile Democ­ra­cies: Bod­ies, Tech­nolo­gies and Futures
June 8–9, 2026
Pauls Stradiņš Med­i­cine His­to­ry Muse­um in Riga, Latvia

The sym­po­sium brings togeth­er schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers from the social sci­ences, human­i­ties, and health­care fields to explore repro­duc­tion as a key site for think­ing about democ­ra­cy, inequal­i­ty, and the pol­i­tics of care, par­tic­u­lar­ly in con­texts of frag­ile or shift­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic institutions.

Sub­mis­sion dead­line: March 1, 2026 (11:55 PM CET)
Sub­mis­sion link: https://forms.gle/3KGXDLuTnSmXDfnT8

For­mat: title, affil­i­a­tion, and 200-word abstract
Par­tic­i­pa­tion: free of charge

Keynote speak­ers include Agniesz­ka Koś­ci­ańs­ka (Uni­ver­si­ty of War­saw) and Ani­ka König (Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin).

MVM — SYMPOSIUM

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Pan­el “Embody­ing the Immea­sur­able: Mate­r­i­al Prospec­tions on Pain, Ill­ness, and Suf­fer­ing in Crisis”
Part of the track “Method­olo­gies Anchored in Design, Pro­to­types, and Mate­r­i­al Cre­ation” at the XVI ESOCITE Con­fer­ence (Aso­ciación Lati­noamer­i­cana de Estu­dios Sociales de Cien­cia y Tecnología)
June 24 to 26, 2026
Bogotá, Colombia 

In times of glob­al crises—pandemics, con­flicts, envi­ron­men­tal disasters—pain, ill­ness, and suf­fer­ing tra­verse bod­ies, sens­es, and mate­ri­al­i­ties. This pan­el invites explo­ration of how the human is con­sti­tut­ed under these extreme con­di­tions and how the (in)material, togeth­er with Futures Design, can offer tools to envi­sion and project pos­si­ble envi­ron­ments and sce­nar­ios that shape the expe­ri­ence of suf­fer­ing (Fry, 2009).
We wel­come sub­mis­sions address­ing these issues from diverse the­o­ries of sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and epis­te­mo­log­i­cal approach­es: embod­ied cog­ni­tion (Varela, Thomp­son & Rosch, 1991); phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal and med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy approach­es (Rouse, 2009; Klein­man, 1997, 2020; Biehl, 2005); the exis­ten­tial dimen­sion and bod­i­ly vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty (Cos­melli, 2025); as well as the inter­ac­tion between tech­nol­o­gy, mate­ri­al­i­ty, and invis­i­ble worlds, show­ing how envi­ron­ments and objects shape expe­ri­ences that tran­scend the tan­gi­ble (Espíri­to San­to, 2020,2021,2025) and crit­i­cal analy­ses of pow­er rela­tions and ontolo­gies of the human (Povinel­li, 2021).
The STS com­mu­ni­ty is invit­ed to con­tribute papers that cre­ative­ly and rig­or­ous­ly con­nect expe­ri­ences, the­o­ries, and projections—such as applied projects, media-based work, the­o­ret­i­cal papers, and lit­er­a­ture reviews—that con­tribute to crit­i­cal think­ing in Futures Design, inte­grat­ing expe­ri­ences, the­o­ries, and mate­ri­al­i­ties to gen­er­ate new hori­zons in rela­tion to pain, ill­ness, and suffering.

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CfP: Democ­ra­cy as Health; Work­shop and Edit­ed Vol­ume; June 29–30, 2026, Geneva

Call for papers for a work­shop tak­ing place next sum­mer, which intends to lead to an edit­ed vol­ume, titled ‘Democ­ra­cy as Health.’ This event will take place in Gene­va on June 29–30, 2026, orga­nized by myself and Pro­fes­sor Aditya Bharad­waj from the Gene­va Grad­u­ate Insti­tute. We have the hon­or to be joined by keynote speak­ers includ­ing Pro­fes­sors Jes­si­ca Mul­li­gan, San­dra Bärn­reuther, Jan­i­na Kehr, and Ruth Prince. 

The full call for papers is avail­able at the link below, and attached. We encour­age ethno­graph­i­cal­ly ground­ed per­spec­tives across all con­texts. Abstract sub­mis­sions of up to 500 words should be sent to Robert.Smith@graduateinstitute.ch no lat­er than Jan­u­ary 5th, 2026. The work­shop is in per­son. Par­tial fund­ing stipends are avail­able for par­tic­i­pants on a need-based basis. Par­tic­i­pants should indi­cate their inter­est in finan­cial sup­port at the time of their appli­ca­tion. Should you have any ques­tions, please also feel free to reach out to me directly.

CfP:

Glob­al­ly, pub­licly fund­ed health­care has become increas­ing­ly politi­cized with­in demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es over the past decades. Rang­ing from the politi­ciza­tion of the Unit­ed States’ Afford­able Care Act dubbed ‘Oba­maCare,’ the resis­tance to the increas­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Unit­ed Kingdom’s Nation­al Health Ser­vice, pop­ulist polit­i­cal brand­ings of health­care infra­struc­tures in South Asia, or cit­i­zen activism across con­texts, health has increas­ing­ly entered demo­c­ra­t­ic agen­das. Con­trast­ing from 20th cen­tu­ry polit­i­cal move­ments around health­care that gar­nered momen­tum through spe­cif­ic dis­ease cat­e­gories, such as HIV-AIDS (Biehl 2004) or afflic­tion of specif­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions (Petry­na 2013), con­tem­po­rary politi­ciza­tions are increas­ing­ly mobi­liz­ing broad visions of ‘health’ for elec­toral gains (Kehr, Muinde, and Prince 2023; Coop­er, 2019). In many set­tings, such politi­ciza­tions take the form of one-off schemes that are typ­i­cal­ly polit­i­cal­ly tem­po­rary and par­tial in nature, rely­ing on decades of state neglect in health­care to be per­ceived as suc­cess­ful by the elec­torate. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, this ris­ing elec­toral-politi­ciza­tion of health ser­vices and pro­grams also takes place with­in con­texts of ris­ing health austerity. 

There­fore, in this work­shop, we seek to use this emer­gence of health as an explic­it object of elec­toral-polit­i­cal agen­das to think through the con­tem­po­rary rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health, and more broad­ly the pol­i­tics of bio-pol­i­tics. The con­cept of ‘pol­i­tics,’ most broad­ly, has been a long­stand­ing con­cern for med­ical anthro­pol­o­gists’ engage­ment with patients’ expe­ri­ences, and under­stand­ings of pow­er. Sem­i­nal­ly, Foucault’s notion of ‘biopol­i­tics’ has pro­vid­ed a con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tion for med­ical anthro­pol­o­gists to make sense of how process­es of sub­jec­tiviza­tion take place with­in health’s domains, and the gov­ern­men­tal appa­ra­tus­es that ani­mate those process­es. Notably, biopo­lit­i­cal­ly inspired frame­works of pol­i­tics have shaped how anthro­pol­o­gists engage with how patients mobi­lize patho­log­i­cal-bio­log­i­cal iden­ti­ties to place cit­i­zen­ship claims upon the state (Rose and Novas 2005; Biehl 2004; Petry­na 2013; Tick­tin 2011 Nguyen 2010), how bio­med­ical knowl­edge can be used to claim author­i­ty in state spaces (Adams 1998), or how med­i­cine is mobi­lized as a sym­bol of nation­al moder­ni­ty (Broth­er­ton 2012; Al-Dewachi 2017). Yet, neigh­bor­ing dis­ci­plines have point­ed out that the use of pol­i­tics in this lit­er­a­ture may risk con­fin­ing itself to the realm of the bio­log­i­cal, and can “under­mine the polit­i­cal” as an ana­lyt­i­cal cat­e­go­ry by dis­count­ing how oth­er forms of pol­i­tics inter­sect with biol­o­gized pol­i­tics of health (Bird and Lynch 2019). Over­all, the con­cept of ‘pol­i­tics,’ often quick­ly glossed through the ‘pol­i­tics of health,’ main­tains a degree of ambiva­lence in the can­non of med­ical anthropology.

In response, this work­shop seeks to bring togeth­er lead­ing schol­ars to ethno­graph­i­cal­ly think through this in a way that is gen­er­a­tive of nov­el con­cep­tu­al for­mu­la­tions to under­stand the con­tem­po­rary rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health. Democ­ra­cy, in this sense, while ground­ed in process­es of elec­toral-pol­i­tics, is not empir­i­cal­ly con­fined to the prac­tice of vot­ing nor the rit­u­al of elec­tions, but seeks to account for the dif­fer­ent realms of the polit­i­cal that work along­side, with­in, and through, and are also con­struct­ed by, the pol­i­tics of health. In approach­ing these ques­tions, we aim to more explic­it­ly bring togeth­er lit­er­a­ture in med­ical and polit­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy. Doing so par­tic­u­lar­ly takes stalk of how con­cepts of polit­i­cal, affec­tive feel­ings of polit­i­cal exis­tence, and the mate­r­i­al-spec­tral real­i­ties of the state inform sub­jec­tiv­i­ties towards health and care (Aretx­a­ga 2003; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Can­dea 2011; Pos­tero and Eli­noff 2019; Steet 2012; Volle­bergh, Kon­ing, and March­esi, 2021). This inter­sec­tion presents oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage with dif­fer­ent read­ings of biopol­i­tics. Specif­i­cal­ly, ear­ly Fou­cauldian ideas of locat­able, tan­gi­ble ‘veins of pow­er’ — as pos­si­ble to see with­in bio­med­ical clin­ics — as well as lat­er Fou­cauldian ideas that pow­er is every­where — as pos­si­ble to see with­in polit­i­cal affects — which need align­ment in order to under­stand con­tem­po­rary for­ma­tions of democ­ra­cy as health. 

This edit­ed vol­ume revolves around the idea that, amidst ris­ing fas­cist, author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies that rely upon health as an elec­toral-polit­i­cal tool, it is increas­ing­ly urgent to reimag­ine the rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health. This vol­ume will seek to revolve around the fol­low­ing cen­tral questions: 

· How does democ­ra­cy reimag­ine the idea of health as an optic, a good, a right, a ser­vice, and more, in rela­tion to the state and the pri­vate sector?
· What do demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es do to the fig­ure of the clin­ic and how does it mod­u­late its gaze?
· What does the rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health do to imag­i­na­tions and rela­tion­al­i­ties between states and subjects?
· How does health’s elec­toral-polit­i­cal uptake trans­mit into the realm of patient expe­ri­ence, sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and embodiment? 

Full CfP as PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x2s1TAuj-E5nbcM9c9GBcbhC3xF0kMWp/view?usp=drive_link

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Call for Papers
Work­shop: De-/val­u­a­tions in paid care work
Uni­ver­si­ty of Lucerne, Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthropology
July 2–3, 2026
Orga­nized by Mad­huri­la­ta Basu, Jürg Büh­ler, San­dra Bärnreuther

Research on care work has often paid atten­tion to ques­tions of val­ue and val­u­a­tion: be it the
descrip­tion of care work as a labor of love, empa­thy, and con­cern (Rose 1983), as a source of
sur­plus val­ue (Fed­eri­ci 2012), as a com­mod­i­ty embed­ded in the glob­al econ­o­my (Hochschild
2000, Par­reñas 2000), or as a foun­da­tion for devel­op­ing alter­na­tive eth­i­cal and polit­i­cal theories
(Gilli­gan 1982; Nod­dings 1984; Held 2006, Tron­to 1993). While some stud­ies examine
dif­fer­ent under­stand­ings and prac­tices of good care along­side the ten­sions and contradictions
they pro­duce (Klein­man 2009, Smith-Mor­ris 2018, Steven­son 2014), much of the research on
paid care work empha­sizes issues of deskilling, deval­u­a­tion, and the extrac­tion of val­ue (e.g.,
John and Wich­terich 2023). The gen­der­ing of care work as female, and its links to domestic
and bod­i­ly labor, are shown to be cru­cial in under­stand­ing the exploita­tion and marginalization
of care work­ers, although there are notable dif­fer­ences across var­i­ous groups (Cohen and
Wolkowitz 2018, Ray 2019).

The val­u­a­tion and deval­u­a­tion of care occur through com­plex process­es, includ­ing ongoing
nego­ti­a­tions with larg­er eco­nom­ic and soci­etal struc­tures. Giv­en the high­ly ambigu­ous nature
of these val­u­a­tions, it is easy to over­look that care work­ers them­selves assign mean­ing, moral
sig­nif­i­cance, and val­ue to their work, often in ways that may dif­fer from pop­u­lar and scholarly
descrip­tions and assess­ments. Under­stand­ing these self-per­cep­tions is essen­tial, even though
care work­ers’ voic­es often remain unheard. Trac­ing intri­cate process­es of val­u­a­tion and
deval­u­a­tion by care work­ers and oth­er actors involved in paid care work is there­fore cru­cial for
under­stand­ing how care work is expe­ri­enced and shaped over time.

This work­shop aims to exam­ine val­u­a­tion prac­tices relat­ed to paid care work, empha­siz­ing the
per­spec­tives of var­i­ous actors, includ­ing care­givers, mem­bers of care insti­tu­tions (such as
man­age­ment, edu­ca­tors, and doc­tors), and care recip­i­ents. We fol­low Dus­sauge et al. (2015) in
view­ing value(s) not as “pre­fixed entit[ies] which explain […] action” but treat “the genesis,
artic­u­la­tion, dis­pute, and set­tling of what comes to count as val­ues as mat­ters for empirical
inves­ti­ga­tion and expla­na­tion” (ibid., 6). Through an in-depth analy­sis of the mak­ing of values
in care prac­tice, we seek to under­stand process­es of de-/val­u­a­tion of care work, skills, degrees,
health, and work­ers them­selves. Impor­tant­ly, pow­er is not absent in this approach; to the
con­trary: “By study­ing the mak­ing of val­ues tra­di­tion­al­ly seen as belong­ing to different
domains we can see pow­er strug­gles over which val­ues are to be dom­i­nant, the mak­ing of
bound­aries between val­ues (that may become made as sep­a­rate), and when dif­fer­ent val­ues are
made com­men­su­rable” (ibid.). The work­shop high­lights the con­flict­ing con­cerns and stakes
involved in pro­vid­ing care, as well as how val­u­a­tions are active­ly pro­duced, trans­formed, and
maintained.

We invite ethno­graph­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed schol­ars study­ing paid care work across var­i­ous fields and
regions to join this work­shop. Pos­si­ble top­ics for papers might include: dis­cours­es of de-
/valuation in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and work­places; ratio­nal­iza­tions of dif­fer­ent labor
regimes; rela­tion­ships among dif­fer­ent groups of care work­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al groups;
changes in work­force com­po­si­tion; labor strug­gles and union­iza­tion efforts; the introduction
of new tech­nolo­gies; or care work and the plat­form economy.

Please send your abstract (up to 500 words) and author biog­ra­phy (up to 100 words) by
Jan­u­ary 16, 2026, to madhurilata.basu@unilu.ch. We may have lim­it­ed funds to sup­port travel
and accom­mo­da­tion costs for a few par­tic­i­pants. Please indi­cate in your appli­ca­tion if you
require finan­cial assistance.

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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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