AGEM Roundtable: Crossing boundaries between medical anthropology and biomedicine

Datum
17. Sep­tem­ber 2025 

AGEM Rount­able at the Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy Europe Con­fer­ence: Rede­f­i­n­i­tions of Health and Well-being in Vienna

For fifty-five years, the Asso­ci­a­tion for Anthro­pol­o­gy and Med­i­cine (AGEM) has been medi­at­ing between med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy and med­ical prac­tice by address­ing the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of def­i­n­i­tions and under­stand­ings of health. In this round­table, we will exam­ine the cur­rent sta­tus and chal­lenges in research and health care, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to the rel­e­vance of teach­ing med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy in con­tem­po­rary bio­med­ical insti­tu­tions, along the fol­low­ing questions:
Could exchanges between med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy and bio­med­i­cine con­tribute to over­com­ing bound­aries between the life and social sci­ences, or is it per­ti­nent to insist on pre­serv­ing an epis­temic ago­nism between the fields in order to make the dif­fer­ences between them productive?
How can cur­rent chal­lenges in dai­ly prac­tice be addressed by draw­ing on anthro­pol­o­gy in the process of social­i­sa­tion and pro­fes­sion­al iden­ti­ty for­ma­tion of physi­cians and allied health pro­fes­sion­als, and how can this be done and improved?
What are the spe­cif­ic con­tri­bu­tions of med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy in com­par­i­son to oth­er dis­ci­plines, e.g., in rela­tion to psy­chol­o­gy, psy­chi­a­try, sociology?
We pro­pose to dis­cuss these ques­tions in rela­tion to press­ing issues such as: migra­tion, racism, trans­la­tion, sol­i­dar­i­ty, and oth­er inter­sec­tion­al con­cerns. Fur­ther­more, we exam­ine the role of sit­u­at­ed biol­o­gy, diag­nos­tic fric­tions, and var­i­ous con­cep­tu­al­iza­tions of the body.
The par­tic­i­pants will dis­cuss exam­ples of (un)successful inter­ac­tions in teach­ing and prac­tice based on their prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ences and research.
Par­tic­i­pants include anthro­pol­o­gists, clin­i­cal physi­cians, and psy­chol­o­gists work­ing at the inter­sec­tions of anthro­pol­o­gy and med­i­cine in med­ical schools and research institutes.

Orga­niz­ers: Clemens Eisen­mann, Ste­fan Rein­sch, Márcio Vilar, and Ehler Voss,

Pan­elists: Chris­tine Holm­berg (Bran­den­burg Med­ical School Theodor Fontane), Seth M. Holmes (Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Berke­ley), Ulrike Kluge (Char­ité Berlin), and Torsten Risør (Uni­ver­si­ty of Copenhagen)

Room 2–0‑4

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