BIRTH RITES COLLECTION SUMMER SCHOOL 2026 ONLINE
The world’s only con­tem­po­rary art col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to child­birth invites you to a pro­gramme of lec­tures, work­shops, sem­i­nars and one-to-one tutorials.

This Year’s theme: REPRODUCTION AND THE STATE

How do artists con­test dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives of birth and mater­ni­ty? Whose bod­ies are heard, treat­ed and believed in mater­nal health­care? How do states instru­men­talise repro­duc­tion through pol­i­cy, imagery and ide­ol­o­gy? How can the mater­nal become a site of resis­tance and reimagining?

Led by artist and BRC Cura­tor Dr Helen Knowles and artist Dr Leni Dothan, the course brings you into dia­logue with the col­lec­tion, this year’s themes, and your own prac­tice. You’ll leave with bespoke visu­al, tex­tu­al, audi­to­ry, pho­to­graph­ic, filmic or per­for­ma­tive work to car­ry into your future practice.

This year, par­tic­i­pants gain exclu­sive access to a curat­ed selec­tion of works from the col­lec­tion not ordi­nar­i­ly avail­able to the pub­lic, pre­sent­ed in a ded­i­cat­ed online space. Work­shops explore the aes­thet­ic, eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal and visu­al dis­cours­es of birth through text, film and per­for­mance. Lec­tures from lead­ing artists and aca­d­e­mics open up the fol­low­ing themes:

-Insti­tu­tion­al bias in mater­nal health­care — race, class, and the pol­i­tics of care

-Prona­tal­ism, bor­der regimes, and repro­duc­tive justice

-The Collection’s impact on fem­i­nist art and the visu­al his­to­ry of birth

-Cen­sor­ship, ethics and the law around art­works on birth

-How the Col­lec­tion can shape prac­tice and pol­i­cy in mid­wifery, med­i­cine and education

Open to mid­wives, artists, aca­d­e­mics, cura­tors, medics, health pro­fes­sion­als, art his­to­ri­ans, pol­i­cy advi­sors — and any­one engaged with child­birth through the lens of art.

Our 2026 Keynote Speak­er is the renowned video artist, CANDICE BREITZ. Oth­er artists invit­ed to speak are: Sarah Sud­hoff, RAYVENN SHALEIGHA D’CLARK, Andrea Kho­ra, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more announced soon.

Any ques­tions? Read our FAQs for more infor­ma­tion about the BRC Sum­mer School

Five-Week Course (Online):
Dates: Wednes­days, 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM BST July 1,8,15, 22, 29 & Sat­ur­day 18, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST. All lec­tures, work­shops, and dis­cus­sions will take place online. Cost: 600 GBP per per­son 450 GBP Con­ces­sion Rate.

A 100GBP deposit is required to secure a place for the course. There is one bur­sary place avail­able. For more infor­ma­tion please email helen@birthrites.org.uk or check out our web­site sum­mer school page: https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/summerschool2026

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Health­care Improve­ment Sum­mer School
8th-10th July, 2026
Leices­ter Tigers Rug­by Club­house in Leices­ter, UK

The SAPPHIRE (Social Sci­ence APPlied Health­care & Improve­ment Research) research group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter are pleased to announce our pop­u­lar Ethnog­ra­phy for Health­care Improve­ment Sum­mer School will be offered again in 2026, and will run 8th-10th July, 2026, at Leices­ter Tigers Rug­by Club­house in Leices­ter, UK. This short course is designed for Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tors, Researchers and Doc­tor­al Stu­dents to crit­i­cal­ly engage with the the­o­ry and prac­tice of ethnog­ra­phy in health­care set­tings. Over 3 days, you will learn more about the use of ethnog­ra­phy for health­care improve­ment, from design­ing research to man­ag­ing improve­ment and eval­u­a­tion ten­sions, nav­i­gat­ing dif­fer­ent con­texts, reach­ing audi­ences and influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy and prac­tice. Addi­tion­al­ly, you will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op a net­work of fel­low prac­ti­tion­ers and researchers with shared method­olog­i­cal inter­ests, work with expe­ri­enced ethno­g­ra­phers as men­tors, and join an inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice around ethnog­ra­phy for health­care improve­ment. The cost of the 3 day course, includ­ing all edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als and activ­i­ties, plus lunch and refresh­ments all days, is £1000 (inclu­sive of VAT). Trans­port to and from the venue and accom­mo­da­tion is not includ­ed, and should be arranged indi­vid­u­al­ly by delegates.

Reg­is­tra­tions are strict­ly lim­it­ed, and are now open at https://shop.le.ac.uk/product-catalogue/events-at-leicester/health-sciences/ethnography-for-healthcare-improvement-summer-school-2026; book­ings will close 31st May 2026. A wait­ing list will be main­tained in the event of the course being over-sub­scribed. Please for­ward any ques­tions to Jen­nifer Creese, course lead: jennifer.creese@leicester.ac.uk.

Best wish­es, Dr Jen­nifer Creese (BA, MIM, PhD, FHEA) (She/Her/Hers)
Lec­tur­er, School of Med­ical Sci­ences – Pub­lic Health and Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Divi­sion (SAPPHIRE Group)
Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter, George Davies Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty Road, Leices­ter LE1 7RH UK

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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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