Veranstaltungskalender

„Embod­ied Lives: Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Dia­logues on the Body”
14 to 16 Sep­tem­ber 2026
Uni­ver­si­ty of Mal­ta and online

This is a three-day inter­na­tion­al col­lo­qui­um bring­ing togeth­er schol­ars, prac­ti­tion­ers and stu­dents to explore the body as lived expe­ri­ence and its inter­sec­tions with soci­ety, cul­ture and meaning.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion and reg­is­tra­tion are avail­able at www.embodiedlives.com.

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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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CfP for Pan­el at 24th IMISCOE annu­al con­fer­ence: „Unit­ed for Human Rights and Glob­al Equity”
6–9 July 2027
Brus­sels and online

CfPs for the pan­el pro­pos­al below on “The right to (healthy and sus­tain­able) food: an inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive on access, inequal­i­ties and lived expe­ri­ences”. Please send your paper pro­pos­als includ­ing a 250-word abstract and the name(s), affiliation(s), and con­tact details of the author(s) by email to Elsa Mescoli e.mescoli@uliege.be and Paula Fer­nan­dez Gar­cia pfgarcia@uliege.be by 21 Sep­tem­ber 2026 at the lat­est. Please also let us know if you are plan­ning to attend the con­fer­ence in Brus­sels or online.

Pan­el proposal

Title: The right to (healthy and sus­tain­able) food: an inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive on access, inequal­i­ties and lived experiences.

Con­venors: Elsa Mescoli and Paula Fer­nan­dez Gar­cia (Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège)

Abstract: In recent years, the ques­tion of the right to food has become increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant, with grow­ing eco­log­i­cal and pub­lic health con­cerns prompt­ing the devel­op­ment of a wide range of ini­tia­tives to ensure access to healthy, sus­tain­able food for all. Across Europe and beyond, diverse food tran­si­tion ini­tia­tives have emerged in urban areas, call­ing for changes in res­i­dents’ food pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion prac­tices. These ini­tia­tives, which include social gro­cery stores, sol­i­dar­i­ty pur­chas­ing groups, com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and food social secu­ri­ty schemes, often present them­selves as inclu­sive. They seek to engage pop­u­la­tion groups that are typ­i­cal­ly per­ceived as less involved in food tran­si­tion move­ments than pre­dom­i­nant­ly white, mid­dle-class par­tic­i­pants, due to their socio-eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, with migrants often iden­ti­fied as one of the key tar­get groups.

In this pan­el, we exam­ine the right to healthy and sus­tain­able food from three com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives. First, we analyse the poli­cies and mech­a­nisms designed to pro­mote broad access to healthy and sus­tain­able food. Sec­ond­ly, we inves­ti­gate how these mech­a­nisms oper­ate in prac­tice, pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the bar­ri­ers they gen­er­ate and the inequal­i­ties they repro­duce or rein­force. Third­ly, we explore how peo­ple from dif­fer­ent social back­grounds expe­ri­ence these ini­tia­tives in every­day life.

Adopt­ing an inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive and draw­ing on empir­i­cal mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous socio-cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal and geo­graph­i­cal con­texts, the pan­el high­light how social posi­tions shaped by struc­tur­al fac­tors that pro­duce and sus­tain socio-eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties influ­ence dis­cours­es and ini­tia­tives sur­round­ing the right to healthy and sus­tain­able food, along­side the ways in which indi­vid­u­als nav­i­gate (or remain exclud­ed from) them. 

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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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Ein­ladung zum Adventstr­e­f­fen „Situ­ierte Entschei­dun­gen im Kon­text von Gesund­heit und Krankheit”
Kom­mis­sion für Medi­z­inan­thro­polo­gie der DGEKW
Do, 04. und Fr, 05. Dezem­ber 2025
Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sität Berlin
March­straße 23, Raum 3.048

Im Fokus ste­hen medi­zinis­che Entschei­dun­gen, wie sie im Zusam­men­spiel mit sozialen, kul­turellen, poli­tis­chen und tech­nol­o­gis­chen Bedin­gun­gen entste­hen – oft über­raschend, wider­sprüch­lich oder kreativ. Die Beiträge loten das Ver­hält­nis aus – the­o­retisch, empirisch, konzep­tionell und method­isch. Das aus­führliche Pro­gramm find­en Sie unten

Während des Adventstr­e­f­fen ist auch ein Kom­mis­sion­str­e­f­fen geplant. Die Ver­anstal­tung find­et auss­chließlich in Präsenz statt. Tagungssprache ist Deutsch. Es wer­den keine Anmelde- oder Tagungs­ge­bühren erhoben. Soll­ten Sie darüber hin­aus an ein­er Ver­net­zung inter­essiert sein oder im Jour­nal-Club der Kom­mis­sion mitwirken wollen, der sich an ver­schiede­nen Ter­mi­nen im Semes­ter trifft, melden Sie sich gerne bei uns.Bei Inter­esse melden Sie sich bitte bis zum 24. Okto­ber 2025 an unter entscheidungen@protonmail.com.

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„Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Sur­veil­lance in the Glob­al South”
22–23 Feb­ru­ary 2027
Manchester

Dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sions is 30 Sep­tem­ber 2026

While epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance is under­stood as a medico-tech­ni­cal or bureau­crat­ic response to dis­eases occur­rences and/or epi­dem­ic sit­u­a­tions, it is also a his­tor­i­cal­ly sit­u­at­ed, mate­ri­al­ly ground­ed, and social­ly embed­ded prac­tice. Schol­ar­ship in the his­to­ry of med­i­cine, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies and med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy has shown that sur­veil­lance activ­i­ties emerge with­in par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal, epis­temic and insti­tu­tion­al con­texts, reveal­ing how dis­eases and pop­u­la­tions are made vis­i­ble and gov­ern­able (Fou­cault 1977; Arm­strong 1995; Bash­ford 2006; Weir and Mykhalovskiy 2010; Fearn­ley 2010; Bar­ney 2014; Engel­mann 2020).

Adopt­ing such a per­spec­tive brings to the fore the frag­ile and often invis­i­ble epis­temic, mate­r­i­al and human infra­struc­tures that under­gird and enable sur­veil­lance (Keck and Lakoff 2013; Reubi and Cochrane 2025). These infra­struc­tures include lab­o­ra­to­ries and diag­nos­tic tests, med­ical cat­e­gories and clas­si­fi­ca­tion man­u­als, paper or dig­i­tal report­ing forms and records as well as social sur­vey method­olo­gies and map­ping strate­gies. They also encom­pass sci­en­tif­ic and expert net­works, knowl­edge about dis­eases, envi­ron­ments, pop­u­la­tions and cul­tures as well as phil­an­thropic, com­mer­cial and state fund­ing streams. Most impor­tant­ly per­haps, they include the peo­ple who car­ry out sur­veil­lance – doc­tors in hos­pi­tals, tech­ni­cians in the lab, data col­lec­tors at sen­tinel sites, ento­mol­o­gists in the field, activists in the com­mu­ni­ty – with their con­cerns, inter­ests and beliefs (Shapin 1989; Geissler and Molyneux 2011; Biruk 2018; Keck 2020).

These infra­struc­tures help make up the world in which we live (Hack­ing 2002; Law 2009; Boell­storff 2011; Lowray 2017; Reubi 2020). They bring about not just new kinds of peo­ple and soci­eties but also new sorts of epi­demics and dis­eases as well as patho­log­i­cal ecolo­gies and envi­ron­ments. Sur­veil­lance infra­struc­tures and their world-mak­ing pow­ers are embed­ded in and shaped by sci­en­tif­ic, polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial projects, whose beliefs, inter­ests and hier­ar­chies they, in turn, help sup­port and rein­force. The medico-topo­graph­i­cal sur­veys used by Euro­pean mil­i­tary doc­tors dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry col­o­niza­tion of Asia and Africa are a good illus­tra­tion (Arnold 1993; Moussy 2015; Koch 2017). As tools for know­ing the trop­i­cal lands of jun­gles and fevers opened through mil­i­tary con­quest, these sur­veys were key to rul­ing and exploit­ing the colonies, con­sol­i­dat­ing a fas­ci­na­tion with phys­i­cal geog­ra­phy and the rela­tion­ship between cli­mate, race, and health. Sim­i­lar­ly, mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry colo­nial trop­i­cal med­i­cine experts and ento­mol­o­gists deployed eco­log­i­cal inspec­tions and lab­o­ra­to­ry analy­ses to map the asso­ci­a­tions between cli­mate, soil, plants, pathogens, ani­mals and humans that, they believed, explained epi­demics like yel­low fever and malar­ia (Ander­son 2004; Weibel 2015; Cum­misky 2020). Like­wise, late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry talk of a grow­ing can­cer epi­dem­ic in the glob­al South based on data col­lec­tion at sen­tinel sites and math­e­mat­i­cal fore­cast mod­el­ing has been increas­ing­ly mobilised by post­colonies build­ing nation­al health­care sys­tems and transna­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in search of new mar­kets (Vaugh­an 2018; Fras­er et al. forthcoming).

We warm­ly invite any­one inter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing to dis­cus­sions on the his­to­ry and social study of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance in the glob­al south. We are inter­est­ed in papers that engage with some of the fol­low­ing questions:

1. How do dif­fer­ent log­ics of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance, includ­ing mil­i­tary, polic­ing, and car­ing ratio­nal­i­ties, coex­ist, over­lap, or come into ten­sion across his­tor­i­cal contexts?

2. What human, mate­r­i­al, eco­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal, and epis­temic infra­struc­tures under­pin epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance, and how are these infra­struc­tures assem­bled, main­tained, and transformed?

3. How have projects of empire, post­colo­nial nation‑building, and com­mer­cial inter­ests shaped the devel­op­ment, organ­i­sa­tion, and deploy­ment of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal surveillance?

4. What sci­en­tif­ic and polit­i­cal lan­guages, nar­ra­tives, and forms of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion struc­ture epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance prac­tices and ren­der dis­eases, epi­demics, human and ani­mal pop­u­la­tions and ecolo­gies legible?

5. What mate­r­i­al infra­struc­tures and tech­nolo­gies, such as trans­port sys­tems, lab­o­ra­to­ry equip­ment, dig­i­tal plat­forms, satel­lite tech­nolo­gies, and paper or elec­tron­ic report­ing tools, are required for epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance to function?

6. What human com­mu­ni­ties, expert cul­tures, and sci­en­tif­ic net­works are cen­tral to the oper­a­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance systems?

7. Who are the often-invis­i­ble tech­ni­cians, inter­me­di­aries, and forms of labour that sus­tain epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance infra­struc­tures, and how is their work organ­ised and valued?

8. What are the tem­po­ral after­lives of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance infra­struc­tures, includ­ing their per­sis­tence, decay, reuse, or trans­for­ma­tion into new forms and practices?

9. What does epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance pro­duce, beyond the detec­tion of dis­ease itself?

The work­shop will be the occa­sion to iden­ti­fy stand­out con­tri­bu­tions for a forth­com­ing Spe­cial Issue on epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance in the glob­al south, to be pub­lished in a lead­ing jour­nal. The work­shop will be held in per­son, with lim­it­ed hybrid access. It will take place over two days, start­ing at lunchtime on Mon­day 22 Feb­ru­ary and fin­ish­ing late after­noon on Tues­day 23 Feb­ru­ary 2027, at the Cen­tre for the His­to­ry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. Lunch, coffee/tea and din­ner will be pro­vid­ed. Lim­it­ed funds for trav­el and accom­mo­da­tion will be avail­able if needed.

The dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sions is 30 Sep­tem­ber 2026. Please send a 250-word abstract and author bio to Adedamo­la Adeti­ba (adedamola.adetiba@manchester.ac.uk), Thande­ka Cochrane (thandeka.cochrane@anthro.ox.ac.uk) and David Reubi (david.reubi@kcl.ac.uk). For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Adedamo­la Adeti­ba, Thande­ka Cochrane or David Reubi at the email address­es above.

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