Veranstaltungskalender

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

Perma­link

Stu­dent Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy Conference
Edin­burgh Cen­tre for Med­ical Anthropology

First week of May 2026

After the suc­cess of last year’s con­fer­ence, the Stu­dents of Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh will be hold­ing our annu­al stu­dent-focussed event in the first week of May 2026. With the rise of AI tech­nol­o­gy and the real­i­ties of liv­ing in the infor­ma­tion age, this year we are call­ing for all things Tech­nocene. This could be dig­i­tal ethno­gra­phies, using dig­i­tal tools to improve pub­lic access to research, a thought piece on the place of anthro­pol­o­gy in the cur­rent world, etc.

Stu­dents can get involved by sim­ply attend­ing, a 3–5 minute light­ning talk or a longer pre­sen­ta­tion about their interest/research, or get­ting involved in plan­ning a work­shop. It’ll be a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents (and staff!) to net­work and hear about one another’s research. Please use this attached form to reg­is­ter your inter­est, and any fur­ther updates will be sent via email. Reg­is­tra­tion will be open until Mon­day 16th March.

Perma­link

Call for papers: Robots for Care: Explor­ing Down­stream Socio-Eth­i­cal Effects & Upstream Inter­ven­tions, Work­shop @ HRI 2026

🗓️ Sub­mis­sion dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 9, 2026 (AoE)
🗓️ Work­shop date: March 16, 2026, Morn­ing GMT
🙌 Work­shop for­mat: Hybrid and interactive
🔗 Work­shop web­site: https://healthrobotsworkshop.github.io

This is an invi­ta­tion for con­tri­bu­tions to the work­shop „Robots for Care: Explor­ing Down­stream Socio-Eth­i­cal Effects and Upstream Inter­ven­tions” held in con­junc­tion with the ACM/IEEE Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Human–Robot Inter­ac­tion (HRI 2026).

The con­text: Robots hold poten­tial to expand acces­si­bil­i­ty to dis­abled com­mu­ni­ties, such as by pro­vid­ing phys­i­cal or cog­ni­tive assis­tance, and enabling new ways of par­tic­i­pat­ing in social activ­i­ties. They also can sup­port health­care work­ers with ancil­lary tasks and care deliv­ery, to sup­port them work­ing at the top of their license. How­ev­er, the real-world deploy­ment of robots across these con­texts can cre­ate social, eth­i­cal, and orga­ni­za­tion­al chal­lenges (e.g., down­stream effects). They may under­mine the agency of dis­abled peo­ple, dis­rupt care deliv­ery, shift roles, and dis­place labor.

Our aim: Bring togeth­er mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary stake­hold­ers to exam­ine these down­stream effects and explore how they might be mit­i­gat­ed through upstream inter­ven­tions of design, research, and policy.

How to con­tribute: We wel­come short con­tri­bu­tions dis­cussing top­ics rel­e­vant to the work­shop. Top­ics include, but are not lim­it­ed to:

Eth­i­cal, legal, and social impli­ca­tions of robots in clin­i­cal or assis­tive contexts
Crit­i­cal reflec­tions on mis/alignments between design goals and impacts of robots on dis­abled communities
Upstream inter­ven­tions at the meso or macro lev­el (e.g., com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry research, policies)
Com­mu­ni­ty-based research practices
Expe­ri­ence reports or deploy­ment insights from con­texts including:

Social­ly assis­tive robots

Cog­ni­tive­ly assis­tive robots
Phys­i­cal­ly assis­tive robots
Hos­pi­tal deployed robots (e.g., deliv­ery, san­i­ta­tion, surgery)
Reha­bil­i­ta­tion robotics

We par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age sub­mis­sions that sur­face lived expe­ri­ences, or cross-dis­ci­pli­nary insights that may be under­rep­re­sent­ed in tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic venues.

Writ­ten sub­mis­sions will be post­ed on our web­site, and pre­sent­ed inter­ac­tive­ly dur­ing a poster ses­sion. There will also be oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­tribute to a fol­low-up jour­nal spe­cial issue.

Poten­tial Atten­dees: We encour­age aca­d­e­mics, non-aca­d­e­mics, and peo­ple with/without affil­i­a­tions to par­tic­i­pate in the work­shop. Sub­mit­ting a paper is not manda­to­ry to attend. The work­shop is designed to be inter­ac­tive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, and we are inter­est­ed in wel­com­ing peo­ple from many back­grounds. The work­shop will be hybrid to sup­port accessibility.

We appre­ci­ate your help in shar­ing this work­shop with rel­e­vant parties.

✉️ Con­tact: healthrobotsworkshop@gmail.com

Perma­link

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.

Perma­link

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

Perma­link

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

Perma­link

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

Perma­link

ACM Inter­ac­tive Health 2026
Ear­ly July, Por­to, Portugal
https://ih.acm.org/

About:

The ACM Inter­ac­tive Health Con­fer­ence (IH) is a new con­fer­ence that aims to be the lead­ing venue for pre­sent­ing work at the inter­sec­tion of Human-Com­put­er Inter­ac­tion (HCI) and Health. The con­fer­ence will wel­come all kinds of work in this space, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to: the study of health prac­tices; the devel­op­ment of meth­ods and the­o­ries for engag­ing users and cre­at­ing human-cen­tered health tech­nolo­gies; or the design, eval­u­a­tion, and imple­men­ta­tion of health tech­nolo­gies to sup­port health and well-being.
Participate:

IH 2026 offers var­i­ous ways to par­tic­i­pate. Authors can sub­mit an extend­ed abstract in the fol­low­ing categories:

Short Forms – Pre­sen­ta­tions for new, emerg­ing, and engag­ing con­tri­bu­tions at the con­fer­ence as a poster;
Demos and Exhi­bi­tions – Sub­mis­sions for on-site demon­stra­tions of inter­ac­tive technologies;
Work­shops – Pro­pos­als for a one-day event for focused dis­cus­sion and for­mu­la­tion of shared goals and agen­das with­in the IH com­mu­ni­ty about key topics;

Doc­tor­al Col­lo­qui­um – Appli­ca­tions for Ph.D. stu­dents to receive men­tor­ships and share research among a small group of peers;
Ear­ly Career Work­shop – Appli­ca­tions for ear­ly career researchers (up to 5 years post-Ph.D.) to attend a one-day event to explore their pro­fes­sion­al activ­i­ties and goals, learn from one anoth­er, and dis­cuss top­ics most impor­tant to them.

We will also open a call for „Relat­ed Con­tri­bu­tions”, papers pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished in oth­er con­fer­ences or jour­nals with an impor­tant mes­sage for the com­mu­ni­ty, which will be pre­sent­ed at IH as a poster or short presentation.
More­over, the con­fer­ence will not have a full paper sub­mis­sion track. Paper ses­sions at the con­fer­ence will be most­ly com­posed of papers accept­ed at the ACM HEALTH jour­nal Spe­cial Issue on Human Cen­tered Com­put­ing in Health­care.

First sub­mis­sion deadlines:

Short forms: Feb­ru­ary 12th 2026
Demos and Exhi­bi­tions: Feb­ru­ary 26th 2026
Work­shops: Jan­u­ary 15th 2026
Doc­tor­al Col­lo­qui­um: Feb­ru­ary 5th 2026
Ear­ly Career Work­shop: April 1st 2026

Join us!
The organ­is­ing team is extreme­ly excit­ed to bring IH to life. The HCI com­mu­ni­ty has been dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cre­at­ing a con­fer­ence bridg­ing HCI and Health for many years at the Spe­cial Inter­est Group on Com­put­er-Human Inter­ac­tion (SIGCHI) of the ACM – the largest asso­ci­a­tion of com­put­ing researchers and professionals.
We hope you will sub­mit your work and join us at the inau­gur­al ACM Inter­ac­tive Health Con­fer­ence in Por­to, Por­tu­gal. You will be joined by researchers, design­ers, prac­ti­tion­ers, health­care pro­fes­sion­als, and patients to reflect and dis­cuss emerg­ing chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties across the social-tech­ni­cal ecosys­tems of health and well-being.
For fur­ther details about the sub­mis­sions, review, pub­li­ca­tion process, or gen­er­al infor­ma­tion about the con­fer­ence, please go to: https://ih.acm.org.

Perma­link

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

Perma­link

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.

Perma­link

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

Perma­link

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.

Perma­link

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.

Perma­link

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

Perma­link

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? 

Perma­link

CfP_Remaking Responsibility_7‑9 Octo­ber 2026

Perma­link