“Testing under crisis / Testing the crises”

Datum
12. Dezem­ber – 13. Dezem­ber 2024 

In Per­son Work­shop at Nation­al and Kapodis­tri­an Uni­ver­si­ty of Athens

Work­shop on “Test­ing under cri­sis / Test­ing the crises”
Nation­al and Kapodis­tri­an Uni­ver­si­ty of Athens
12–13 Dec 2024

A pub­lic health cri­sis, espe­cial­ly an epi­dem­ic, and the responses
for­mu­lat­ed to address it are inter­wo­ven with a wide range of medical,
social and polit­i­cal inter­ven­tions. The aim of the CrisisTesting
Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop is to bring togeth­er nov­el per­spec­tives with
regards to the study of pub­lic health crises by attend­ing to the role
of the devel­op­ment and use of diag­nos­tic tests, to the emer­gence of a
mul­ti­tude of test­ing prac­tices and to the mate­ri­al­i­ties associated
with test­ing infrastructure.

By bring­ing into dia­logue inter­dis­ci­pli­nary per­spec­tives from the
his­to­ry of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and med­i­cine, the social sci­ences, the
medical/health human­i­ties, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies, Media
Stud­ies and oth­er rel­e­vant fields, we would like to explore the
sig­nif­i­cance and cru­cial role of test­ing for med­ical prac­tice and
pub­lic health pol­i­cy-mak­ing. The work­shop has a dou­ble focus. On the
one hand, it explores the social appro­pri­a­tions of test­ing in diverse
set­tings and pub­lic health crises.[1] On the oth­er hand, it
inves­ti­gates pos­si­ble rad­i­cal changes in the his­to­ry and the sociology
of test­ing prac­tices, be it either about test­ing that “occurs inside
the social envi­ron­ment” or about test­ing that “involves the very
mod­i­fi­ca­tion of social environments”.[2]

We invite con­tri­bu­tions that address, but are not lim­it­ed to, the
fol­low­ing research questions:

● How test­ing is being used by governments/public health
author­i­ties to inform pub­lic health inter­ven­tions and to mea­sure their
performance?

● How can we bet­ter under­stand the sociotech­ni­cal trade­offs of
test­ing dur­ing a crisis?

● How does the design of the test­ing infra­struc­ture favor
cer­tain pub­lic health poli­cies in rela­tion to the allo­ca­tion of
avail­able resources? Does the con­fig­u­ra­tion of test­ing, afford­ed by
tech­no­log­i­cal infra­struc­ture, respond to the dynam­ics of health
crises?

● How do cas­es of con­test­ed test­ing prac­tices affect public
health pol­i­cy and the appro­pri­a­tions of test­ing in society?

● What hap­pens in cas­es of dis­rup­tion to the sup­ply of
con­sum­ables that affect test­ing capac­i­ty? How does the avail­abil­i­ty or
lack of test­ing resources and asso­ci­at­ed infra­struc­ture impact
clin­i­cal prac­tice and pol­i­cy-mak­ing dur­ing a crisis?

● In which ways test­ing (and screen­ing) shapes subjectivities
and col­lec­tive iden­ti­ties? How are the notions of health and illness
being (re)shaped by testing?

● How dif­fer­ent uses of test­ing and dif­fer­ent tests are being
pro­mot­ed, judged or chal­lenged by pub­lic health author­i­ties and the
media in the con­text of sci­ence communication?

● In which ways the social pref­er­ences are reflect­ed in the
bal­anc­ing between the lev­el of test­ing speci­fici­ty and sensitivity?

This is the first of two work­shops to be orga­nized in the con­text of
the research project “Test­ing under cri­sis, a his­to­ry from HIV/AIDS to
Covid-19: between pub­lic debates and health poli­cies – CrisisTesting”
(2024–25). The aim of these work­shops is to pro­vide a space for
dis­cus­sion and mean­ing­ful exchanges on the afore­men­tioned top­ics. Our
plan is to pub­lish an edit­ed vol­ume with con­tri­bu­tions addressing
diverse aspects of med­ical test­ing in the con­text of pub­lic health
crises. The sec­ond Work­shop will take place in autumn 2025.

Those inter­est­ed in pre­sent­ing their work, please send your abstract
(approx. 250 words) and a brief bio­graph­i­cal note (approx. 150 words)
to crisistesting@phs.uoa.gr by the 10th of Sep­tem­ber 2024. The two-day
work­shop will take place in the premis­es of the Nation­al and
Kapodis­tri­an Uni­ver­si­ty of Athens and it is an in-per­son event.
Par­tic­i­pa­tion is cost-free; the refresh­ments and meals are cov­ered by
the orga­niz­ers. In excep­tion­al cas­es, we will try to accommodate
hybrid solu­tions (vir­tu­al participation).

The work­shop is orga­nized by the research team mem­bers of the
Cri­sis­Test­ing project: Kate­ri­na Vlan­toni (Prin­ci­pal Investigator),
assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the Depart­ment of Phi­los­o­phy and His­to­ry of
Sci­ence, NKUA; Athana­sios Bar­la­gian­nis, researcher in the Mod­ern Greek
His­to­ry Research Cen­tre, Acad­e­my of Athens; Eiri­ni Mergoupi-Savaidou,
post­doc­tor­al researcher; Mar­ile­na Pat­er­a­ki, post­doc­tor­al researcher;
and, Kostas Rap­tis, post­doc­tor­al researcher.

[1] Beaudevin, C., Berlivet, L., Boudia, S., Bour­gain, C., Cassier,
M., Gaudil­lière, J‑P., & Löwy, I. (2021). ‘Test, Test, Test!’:
Scarci­ty, Tin­ker­ing, and Test­ing Pol­i­cy Ear­ly in the COVID-19 Epidemic
in France. Med­i­cine Anthro­pol­o­gy The­o­ry, 8(2), 1–31.
https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.8.2.5116

[2] Mar­res, N., & Stark, D. (2020). Put to the test: For a new
soci­ol­o­gy of test­ing. The British jour­nal of soci­ol­o­gy, 71(3),
423–443. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468–4446.12746

Details: https://crisistesting.gr/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/CfP-CrisisTestingWorkshop.pdf