Panel

„Think­ing through impact: ethno­graph­ic approaches”
Con­fer­ence Towards an anthro­pol­o­gy for trou­bled times?
Lucerne
June 6–8, 2024.

Sub­mis­sions will be open until Feb­ru­ary, 15.

We invite you to sub­mit an abstract to our open pan­el „Think­ing through impact: ethno­graph­ic approach­es”. We wel­come both tra­di­tion­al and mul­ti­modal pre­sen­ta­tions from all dis­ci­plines and prac­tices. For more details on how to sub­mit, please vis­it our web­page:

If you have any ques­tions at all, please feel free to con­tact any one of us!

Fiona Gedeon Achi: fiona.gedeon-achi@u‑bordeaux.fr
San­dra Bärn­reuther: sandra.baernreuther@unilu.ch
Ben Eyre: ben.eyre@uea.ac.uk

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„Beyond Polar­i­sa­tion: Approach­es to vaccination”
16–19 July 2024
Ams­ter­dam, the Netherlands
Con­venors: Les­ley Brana­gan (Ham­burg Uni­ver­si­ty), Anna Dowrick (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford), Rebec­ca Cas­sidy (Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent), Simon Bai­ley (Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent)

Please sub­mit your pro­pos­al here
CfP dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 12 2024

Short Abstract:

Covid’s threat to mod­ern rea­son­ing and sub­se­quent divi­sions are locat­ed in poli­cies, dis­cours­es and expe­ri­ences of vac­cines, polarised into ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ sen­ti­ment. We con­sid­er the inter­play between the promis­es of vac­cines, unex­pect­ed vac­cine expe­ri­ences, and Covid’s threat to ratio­nal order.

Long Abstract:

The Covid pan­dem­ic brought sig­nif­i­cant trans­for­ma­tions in the tech­nolo­gies, roles, gov­er­nance, dis­cours­es and mean­ings of vaccines.

The tech­no­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal promise of Covid vac­cines has left lim­it­ed space for explo­ration of their unin­tend­ed con­se­quences. Dra­mat­ic polar­i­sa­tions of ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ sen­ti­ments result in dis­be­lief, silenc­ing, and exploita­tion of unex­pect­ed expe­ri­ences con­nect­ed to vac­ci­na­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of vac­cine injury. Sim­i­lar­ly, desire to re-pur­pose vac­cines for oth­er uses, such as treat­ments for Long Covid, has met resistance.

In these respons­es we find a para­dox­i­cal refusal to con­sid­er the spaces and ‘resid­ual cat­e­gories’ (Bowk­er & Star, 2000) between pro- and anti-vac­ci­na­tion, and lim­it­ed engage­ment in the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of what vac­cines ‘do’. How­ev­er, his­to­ries of chang­ing uses of vac­cines as tech­nolo­gies, vac­cine injuries and med­ical-legal reform also show that there are poten­tial sites for con­test­ing these polarised cat­e­gories (Kirk­land, 2016).

We encour­age explo­rations of the broad­er rela­tions between the threat of Covid and the sub­se­quent fail­ures of reflex­iv­i­ty relat­ed to ‘unex­pect­ed reac­tions’ to, with, and about vaccines.

Paper pro­pos­als could consider:

The effects of com­plex­i­ty and uncer­tain­ty upon polar­i­sa­tion, and the para­dox­i­cal ‘hard­en­ing’ of both lay and pro­fes­sion­al per­spec­tives on unex­pect­ed vac­cine reactions;

The tem­po­ral­i­ties and futur­ism at play in promis­es con­cern­ing the unknow­able (Beck­ert, 2016), and the con­se­quent mis­di­rec­tion of vac­cine expec­ta­tions and resources;

The inter­play of polar­is­ing cat­e­gories of risk and threat, trust and mis-trust, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties for nuanced under­stand­ings of agency and vac­cine hesitancy;

The ‘dis­tri­b­u­tion of belief and unbe­lief’ (Dou­glas & Wil­davsky, 1982) rep­re­sent­ed by polarised vac­cine dis­cours­es, and the posi­tion­ing of dif­fer­ent inter­ests (sci­en­tif­ic, pro­fes­sion­al, governmental);

Con­tes­ta­tions of cat­e­gori­sa­tions, through advo­ca­cy, or ‘cit­i­zen­ship work’ (Petry­na, 2004) and the role of nar­ra­tive in medi­at­ing between the ‘counter-fac­tu­al and fac­tu­al’ (Maier, 2004) in the con­text of unex­pect­ed events.

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CfP MedAn­thro pan­els at EASST/4S Con­fer­ence (16–19 July 2024, Amsterdam)
STS con­gress on „Mak­ing and doing transformations”

Dead­line for CfP: 12 Feb 2024
Details here

MedAn­thro Panels:

– MAYS Pan­el: The Dynam­ic Land­scape of Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy: Sci­en­tif­ic Exper­tise and Pub­lic Engage­ment in the Trans­for­ma­tion of Dis­ci­pli­nary Boundaries 

Health­care Transformations:
– Hap­tic Rev­o­lu­tions: Sen­so­ry Futures and Phe­nom­e­nolo­gies of Exper­tise in Med­ical Worlds
– Doing Diver­si­ty: Dif­fer­ence, Equi­ty and Inclu­sion in Bio­med­ical Research
– Mak­ing and Doing Just Infra­struc­tures in Health­care
– The­o­riz­ing through the mun­dane: sto­ry­ing trans­for­ma­tions in healthcare

Healt­care and Tech­nol­o­gy-induced change:
– Health Knowl­edge in Soci­ety: Bio­med­ical Exper­tise, Tech­nolo­gies, Inclu­sion and Inequality
– The tech­nop­o­l­i­tics of (health)care: Trans­form­ing care in more-than-human worlds

– Social exclu­sion in the dig­i­tal age – Explor­ing inequities in the util­i­sa­tion and acces­si­bil­i­ty of eHealth technologies
– Entan­gle­ments of STS and Bioethics: New Approach­es to the Gov­er­nance of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and Robot­ics for Health
– Mak­ing and (un)doing dig­i­tal health and wel­fare trans­for­ma­tions: Nor­ma­tive ten­sions and action reper­toires of embed­ded STS researchers

– Sociotech­ni­cal trans­for­ma­tions of health care: Prac­tices of objec­ti­va­tions, knowl­edge trans­la­tion and new forms of agency 

Health and Data
– Anti-Racist Approach­es to Health Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy
– Data on the move: the pol­i­tics of cross-bor­der health data infrastructures

– Cor­po­re­al Quan­tifi­ca­tion: Numer­i­cal Nego­ti­a­tions of Health and the Body 

Bio­med­ical in a Crit­i­cal Study:
– Gov­ern­ing bio­med­ical tests: Towards Social Stud­ies of Bio-Med­ical Testing?
– Prob­ing Open­ness in Bio­med­ical Plat­forms: Glob­al Health meets Open Sci­ence
– Crit­i­cal and/or cre­ative approach­es to bod­i­ly data and the man­age­ment of health risks
– Pub­lic Par­tic­i­pa­tion and Health Equal­i­ty in Future Biobanking 

CAM:
– STS approach­es to study con­tes­ta­tions of med­ical evi­dence-based knowl­edge and recommendations
Method­ol­o­gy and Research Practice:
– How to research med­ical AI?

– Issues of Scale: The glob­al and the local in health research projects with a world­wide context 

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CfP „Chem­i­cal Affects: Engag­ing Sub­stances in Life-Death Worlds” (P041)
EASST-4S Con­fer­ence, Amsterdam
16–19 July 2023
CfP dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 12 2024 (sub­mit your paper here)

Abstract:
Chem­i­cals are ambiva­lent mat­ters, engaged in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of life and death across geo­gra­phies, organ­isms, and bod­ies. As indus­tri­al prod­ucts they car­ry the his­to­ry of cap­i­tal­ist and envi­ron­men­tal exploita­tion. As effec­tive sub­stances they fos­ter growth and plea­sure, pro­duce kin­ship and belong­ing, or induce harm and suf­fer­ing. As endur­ing par­ti­cles they shape our geo­log­i­cal era, while unequal­ly expos­ing peo­ple to tox­i­cants along the geopo­lit­i­cal lines of class and race (Agard-Jones 2013).
Indus­tri­al chem­i­cals and their by-prod­ucts have become indis­pens­able to human and more-than-human life, act­ing on and trans­form­ing ter­ri­to­ries and bod­ies in ways that are destruc­tive and ben­e­fi­cial to plan­e­tary and human health. In this cur­rent con­di­tion of alter­life (Mur­phy 2017), the his­to­ries of chem­i­cals, their (side) effects as well as their after­lives and spec­u­la­tive futures per­me­ate life-death affec­tive­ly and mate­ri­al­ly. As such, STS schol­ars fol­low chem­i­cals ethno­graph­i­cal­ly (Shapiro and Kirk­sey 2017) and take into account their agency, by allow­ing sub­stances to sur­prise and enthrall (Dumit 2022, Gomart 2004).
This pan­el gath­ers schol­ars work­ing on and with sub­stances in dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines and local­i­ties to explore the pol­i­tics, ethics and affects of liv­ing and dying in rela­tion to chem­i­cals. It expands exist­ing dis­cus­sions with a focus on how spe­cif­ic chem­i­cals – phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, pes­ti­cides and oth­er com­pounds – in their respec­tive form, prop­er­ty and use are engaged in the pro­duc­tion and gov­er­nance of life and death, but also how they blur the lines between those worlds.

The Anthro­pol­o­gy Mat­ters net­work invites papers that:

- trace chem­i­cals in their live­ly and dead­ly poten­tials and method­olog­i­cal­ly attune to their mate­r­i­al-affec­tive capacities.

- crit­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gate prac­tices of inhab­it­ing tox­ic worlds (Nad­ing 2020) as well as the post/colonial inequal­i­ties inscribed in them.

- explore avenues of col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly inter­ven­ing in “chem­i­cal vio­lence” (Mur­phy 2017) to strive for decolo­nial futures.

- ques­tion eth­i­cal imper­a­tives of liv­ing and dying in chem­i­cal­ly altered times.

Con­tact:
Mar­cos Freire de Andrade Neves (Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin)
Max Schnepf (Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin)
Gior­gio Broc­co (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vienna) 

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Trans­form­ing the study of cancer
16–19 July 2024
Ams­ter­dam, the Netherlands
Con­ver­nors: Vio­le­ta Argu­do-Por­tal (Uni­ver­si­tat de Barcelona), Masha Denisova 

CfP dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 12 2024
Please sub­mit your pro­pos­al here

The study of can­cer has gath­ered an exten­sive com­mu­ni­ty of schol­ars in the social sci­ences and human­i­ties, pro­vid­ing a more dense, het­ero­ge­neous, and diverse approach to this dis­ease mul­ti­ple. Sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy schol­ars have tak­en an impor­tant role in this task by exam­in­ing how knowl­edge about can­cer is pro­duced and with what con­se­quences for researchers, prac­ti­tion­ers, and patients. In this pan­el, we seek to make explic­it the con­tri­bu­tions of STS tools and sen­si­bil­i­ties to the can­cer study. STS toolk­it becomes par­tic­u­lar­ly help­ful in dis­cern­ing what log­ics, inter­ests, and imag­i­nar­ies are at play in the can­cer research and care are­na. The ever-increas­ing influ­ence of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and invest­ments in heav­i­ly tech­no­crat­ic forms of can­cer care trans­form not only the forms of can­cer diag­nos­tics and treat­ment but also the expe­ri­ences of those liv­ing with the dis­ease. The grow­ing atten­tion to cell biol­o­gy research and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion of risk makes can­cer research shift fur­ther from iden­ti­fy­ing oth­er aeti­olo­gies of can­cer, such as envi­ron­men­tal and eco­log­i­cal links. These trans­for­ma­tions col­lec­tive­ly shape how can­cer is known and lived with. For this pan­el, we invite empir­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal sub­mis­sions that revolve around the study of can­cer, rang­ing from atten­tion to high-tech tech­no­log­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal endeav­ors to dif­fer­ent forms of craft­ing care, knowl­edge, treat­ments, infra­struc­tures, and knowl­edge. Works explor­ing car­cino­genic leaks, can­cer pol­i­tics, and epis­temic absences are par­tic­u­lar­ly welcome.

The pan­el is con­vened by the Polit­i­cal Stakes of Can­cer Net­work, an inter­na­tion­al group of social sci­ences and human­i­ties schol­ars study­ing sci­ence, soci­ety, and pow­er rela­tion­ships in can­cer across the globe. The pan­el will fol­low a com­bined for­mat, includ­ing ses­sions with con­ven­tion­al paper pre­sen­ta­tions and an exper­i­men­tal ses­sion for which we encour­age sub­mis­sions based on mul­ti­modal mate­ri­als (illus­tra­tions, short films, visu­al essays, exper­i­men­tal data visu­al­iza­tions, and more).

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“(Un)Knowing Harm: Localised Epis­temic Respons­es to Glob­al Envi­ron­men­tal Degradation”

EASA2024: Doing and Undo­ing with Anthro­pol­o­gy (Barcelona)

Date: 23–26 July 2024

The dead­line for paper sub­mis­sions is 22 Jan­u­ary 2024. Please note that the pan­el will take place face-to-face.

Short Abstract:
The pan­el exam­ines the tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies by which envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and harm on the indi­vid­ual and the social body become known and unknown, voiced and silenced, man­i­fest­ed and repressed, thus shed­ding light onto the nexus of epis­temic uncer­tain­ty and envi­ron­men­tal injustice.

Long Abstract:
Cap­i­tal­ist extrac­tivism, indus­tri­al­ism, mil­i­tarism, and ongo­ing forms of colo­nial­ism leave the plan­et dam­aged. Be it the loss of habi­tats for human com­mu­ni­ties and oth­er forms of life or the amounts of tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nants that suf­fuse the envi­ron­ment, the very real­i­ty of envi­ron­men­tal dam­age is often con­test­ed as it gets tan­gled in process­es of know­ing, unknow­ing, denial, dis­avow­al, and igno­rance. Pow­er­ful actors—state author­i­ties, cor­po­ra­tions, the military—all play a cen­tral role in such pol­i­tics of (un)knowing by exer­cis­ing monop­o­lies on sci­en­tif­ic and expert knowl­edge, there­by pre­scrib­ing what ought to be known and unknown in order to pro­tect their polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, and strate­gic inter­ests. Civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions, activist groups, and indi­vid­u­als often protest such epis­temic and envi­ron­men­tal injus­tices, fight­ing for greater trans­paren­cy and access to knowl­edge. But what counts as knowl­edge is fre­quent­ly disputed—even when it comes in the form of hard sci­en­tif­ic evidence—not only by the vest­ed inter­ests of pow­er, but also by those who bear the bur­den of envi­ron­men­tal harm. For it is not uncom­mon for peo­ple and groups to har­ness prac­tices of (un)knowing to deal with envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion in ways that might allow them to escape stig­ma­ti­sa­tion, resist or refuse empow­ered con­straints, or sim­ply live lives that are more meaningful.

We invite ethno­graph­i­cal­ly-rich papers that exam­ine the tech­niques and tech­nolo­gies by which envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and harm on the indi­vid­ual and the social body become known and unknown, voiced and silenced, man­i­fest­ed and repressed, thus shed­ding light onto the nexus of epis­temic uncer­tain­ty and envi­ron­men­tal injus­tice in late industrialism.

More info

Pan­el convenors:
Niko­laos Olma (Leib­niz-Zen­trum Mod­ern­er Ori­ent – ZMO)
Rishabh Ragha­van (Max Planck Insti­tute for Social Anthropology)

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Pan­el „Bioso­cial Approach­es to Health and Environment”

EASA con­fer­ence in Barcelona
Date: 23–26 July 2024
CfP dead­line: 22 Jan­u­ary 2024.

Short Abstract:
This pan­el dis­cuss­es how anthro­pol­o­gists can con­tribute to col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts in study­ing envi­ron­men­tal impacts on (ill)health by com­plex­i­fy­ing ‘the social’ and ask­ing how such col­lab­o­ra­tions might lead to more tractable tar­gets for bioso­cial­ly informed eco­log­i­cal health and pol­i­cy interventions.
Long Abstract:

Increas­ing­ly, social deter­mi­nants and mate­r­i­al ele­ments are being con­sid­ered rel­e­vant forms of expo­sure that have direct impacts on envi­ron­men­tal (ill)health (e.g. in expo­some or urban men­tal health research). This reflects shifts in fields such as epi­demi­ol­o­gy in recog­nis­ing how envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions are not sim­ply ‘resid­ual’ or ‘con­found­ing’ risk fac­tors but in fact ‘over-arch­ing deter­mi­nants’ of (ill)health (Vineis 2022).

Yet mea­sure­ments and def­i­n­i­tions of ‘the social’ in such research are often con­cep­tu­al­ly sim­plis­tic, empir­i­cal­ly thin and lack an under­stand­ing of the dynam­ic and sit­u­at­ed inter­play of socio-eco­log­i­cal vari­ables (Man­ning 2019; Söder­ström n.d.). While epi­demi­o­log­i­cal stud­ies have iden­ti­fied high-lev­el social vari­ables (SES, eth­nic­i­ty, pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty) asso­ci­at­ed with (ill)health, ethno­graph­ic stud­ies have shown how com­plex envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions emerge and are dealt with in sit­u­at­ed every­day life (Bis­ter et al. 2016; Rose/Fitzgerald 2022).

There is an urgent need for more effec­tive trans­dis­ci­pli­nary engage­ment that can attend to com­plex­i­ty in exam­in­ing the socio-envi­ron­men­tal (Lappé/Hein 2020) where urban/rural/developing envi­ron­ments, cli­mates and health are inter­act­ing but also con­sid­ers how exact­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion can be part of ‘mak­ing bet­ter num­bers’ (Roberts 2021)

In this pan­el, we will reflect on efforts by anthro­pol­o­gists to devel­op col­lab­o­ra­tive bioso­cial research rel­e­vant to exam­ine the com­plex dynam­ics of health and envi­ron­ment. We will con­sid­er the con­cep­tu­al and method­olog­i­cal con­tri­bu­tion of anthro­pol­o­gy in new­ly evolv­ing bioso­cial epidemiologic/biomedical research on health and envi­ron­ments, what form of inter- and trans­dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es are required, and in what ways these might lead to more tractable tar­gets for bioso­cial­ly informed eco­log­i­cal health and pol­i­cy interventions.

Con­vened by by Patrick Biel­er Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich (Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty Miu­nich), Sahra Gib­bon and Rosie Math­ers (Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege London) 

More info here

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Online Pan­el „Care mod­els in tran­si­tion: pub­lic pol­i­cy chal­lenges in response to the pan­dem­ic crisis”
EASA conference
Barcelona, July 23–26, 2024.

Please sub­mit your pro­pos­al here
Dead­line: 22 Jan­u­ary 2024.

Con­venors:
Car­los Chiri­nos (Rovi­ra i Vir­gili Uni­ver­si­ty, Spain)
Sil­via Bofill-Poch (Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona, Spain)
Antó­nia Pedroso de Lima (ISCTE-IUL CRIA, Portugal)

Short abstract:
The COVID-19 cri­sis has shown the struc­tur­al weak­ness­es of our care mod­els. This pan­el encour­ages con­tri­bu­tions to a crit­i­cal debate on changes in pub­lic care poli­cies in response to the pan­dem­ic cri­sis from an anthro­po­log­i­cal perspective.

Long Abstract:
The glob­al COVID-19 pan­dem­ic brought into focus the effects of a long-last­ing care cri­sis in Europe and beyond (Daly 2020). The COVID-19 cri­sis stretched our health and social pro­tec­tion sys­tems to the lim­it, exac­er­bat­ed already exist­ing social inequal­i­ties and showed the struc­tur­al weak­ness­es of our care mod­els. Fam­i­lies, and paid care work­ers, had to cope with sud­den dif­fi­cul­ties, some of which were extreme­ly com­plex to man­age. Some cit­i­zens’ move­ments react­ed and raised their voic­es for a fair­er and more sus­tain­able care mod­el. Insti­tu­tions also react­ed. The urgency of a change of mod­el became evi­dent. In 2022, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion approved the Euro­pean Care Strat­e­gy, which is already guid­ing dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ments’ pro­grammes to change the care mod­el. The Strat­e­gy states that this change is essen­tial and must be accom­pa­nied by sig­nif­i­cant reforms and pub­lic invest­ment. Accord­ing­ly, we are inter­est­ed in con­tri­bu­tions address­ing: a) pol­i­cy respons­es to the care cri­sis (or over­lap­ping crises: finan­cial, health, cli­mate, etc.); b) the ten­sions –risks and poten­tials– that some of the sug­gest­ed mea­sures entail, such as dein­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion, per­son-cen­tred care or the pub­lic-com­mu­ni­ty care mod­el; and c) the chal­lenges involved in mov­ing towards more com­pre­hen­sive mod­els of care, in terms of artic­u­la­tion between dif­fer­ent agents of care, and in terms of pol­i­cy artic­u­la­tion (care, health and hous­ing poli­cies, among oth­ers). All of this will be based on empir­i­cal research, which will enable the debate to be ground­ed and com­pared. This pan­el will con­tribute toward open­ing a crit­i­cal debate on changes in pub­lic poli­cies on care in the com­ing years from an anthro­po­log­i­cal perspective.

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Cfp for Panel
„Chal­leng­ing Glob­al Health through a socio-anthro­po­log­i­cal lens”
18th EASA Bien­ni­al Con­fer­ence, 23–26 July 2024 (Barcelona)
Dead­line: 22 Jan­u­ary 2024

Short Abstract:

The pan­dem­ic revealed the inequities that struc­ture the glob­al health appa­ra­tus. This pan­el pro­pos­es a space for reflect­ing on the con­tri­bu­tions of anthro­pol­o­gy to the field of glob­al health, as a dis­ci­pline sen­si­tive to nuanced under­stand­ings of health and key to crit­i­cal­ly assess health inequities

Long Abstract:

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has brought age-old glob­al health issues to the fore­front of pub­lic debates, reveal­ing the stark inequities that struc­ture the glob­al health appa­ra­tus. From an anthro­po­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, the field of glob­al health is an area of research that links health to assem­blages of com­plex and con­tin­gent glob­al process­es, con­tribut­ing to analy­ses of health inequities and the social deter­mi­nants of health. Hence, the pan­dem­ic has con­sti­tut­ed an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for anthro­po­log­i­cal insights to (re)shape debates and prac­tices around emerg­ing top­ics and these clas­sic (but unre­solved) issues.
Build­ing on con­cepts crit­i­cal to under­stand­ing health and well-being (i.e. stig­ma, eth­nic­i­ty, med­ical­i­sa­tion) and dri­ven by con­cerns over ‘glo­cal’ process­es, socio­cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy is unique­ly posi­tioned to advance progress in glob­al health equi­ty. More­over, through key and well-known dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es for method­olog­i­cal self-exam­i­na­tion (i.e. posi­tion­al­i­ty, reflex­iv­i­ty), anthro­po­log­i­cal prac­tice is com­pelled to crit­i­cal­ly rethink glob­al health schol­ar­ly inquiry. In the after­math of a glob­al pan­dem­ic, anthro­po­log­i­cal work in and of glob­al health has nev­er been more urgent.

We invite papers on the fol­low­ing broad themes:

(Mis)alignments between health pri­or­i­ties of local pop­u­la­tions and those of the glob­al health agenda
How glob­al inequities in access to, and dis­tri­b­u­tion of, medicines/treatments/vaccines unfold in local contexts
Crit­i­cal analy­sis of emerg­ing key con­cepts in glob­al health dis­course (eg. glob­al health secu­ri­ty, vac­cine hesitancy)
Case stud­ies explor­ing the role of local com­mu­ni­ties in address­ing pub­lic health prob­lems, Inter­dis­ci­pli­nar­i­ty, method­olog­i­cal and eth­i­cal aspects of socio-anthro­po­log­i­cal research in, and of, glob­al health

Con­ver­nors:

Cristi­na Engui­ta-Fer­nan­dez (Barcelona Insti­tute for Glob­al Health (ISGlob­al))
Yara Alon­so (Uni­ver­si­ty of Agder)
Olga Cam­ba­co (Swiss Trop­i­cal and Pub­lic Health Institute)
Neusa Tor­res (Uni­ver­si­ty of Wits)

Please, con­sid­er join­ing us! The pan­el will take place on-site. You can sub­mit your papers here.
Dead­line: 22 Jan­u­ary 2024
We look for­ward to receiv­ing inter­est­ing and stim­u­lat­ing proposals!

Best wish­es
Yara, Olga, Neusa & Cristina

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„Col­lab­o­ra­tion as method in Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy. Fem­i­nist and decolo­nial perspectives”
EASA, Barcelona, 23–26 July 2024)
CfP Deadline:22 Jan­u­ary 2024

More Info here

Short Abstract:
What is col­lab­o­ra­tive research in Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy? How to have trust­ing and sym­met­ri­cal rela­tion­ships when address­ing health-relat­ed inequal­i­ties and pow­er rela­tions? From a fem­i­nist and decolo­nial approach, we dis­cuss the (im)possibilities of col­lab­o­ra­tion in Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy research.

Long Abstract:
Over the past decades, Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy has been reflect­ing on its method­olog­i­cal approach­es, espe­cial­ly in con­texts of marked inequal­i­ty and pow­er imbal­ance; as well as in con­texts where our inter­locu­tors’ sur­vival and exis­tence are at stake, and where they face suf­fer­ing and dev­as­ta­tion. How to do ethno­graph­ic research on con­di­tions of suf­fer­ing and inequal­i­ty when address­ing health-relat­ed issues with­out repro­duc­ing these conditions?
From a fem­i­nist and decolo­nial approach to research and knowl­edge prac­tices, col­lab­o­ra­tive research fig­ures as one pos­si­ble way to coun­ter­act extrac­tivist modes of field­work that feed into and per­pet­u­ate the long-last­ing matrix of pow­er. How­ev­er, if we are to engage in ‘true’ col­lab­o­ra­tion, ques­tions arise about the var­ied forms it may (and should) take. For instance, when does col­lab­o­ra­tion begin, and when and how does it end? How do dif­fer­ent forms of knowl­edge enter into dia­logue dur­ing field­work and become an inte­gral part of the research find­ings? What can col­lab­o­ra­tion look like in the con­text of aca­d­e­m­ic hier­ar­chies, espe­cial­ly when it involves ear­ly-career researchers (includ­ing stu­dents)? How can ECRs with often low paid and short-term jobs engage in time- and resource-con­sum­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with­out increas­ing their pre­car­i­ous status?
In this round-table, we plan to crit­i­cal­ly engage with col­lab­o­ra­tive method­olo­gies which are ide­al­ly based on con­crete ethno­graph­ic case stud­ies. We aim to dis­cuss and learn from the chal­lenges of such method­olo­gies that have the poten­tial of decen­ter­ing aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge prac­tices by giv­ing equal room to diverse forms of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion in mat­ters of health, care, hope, body, life, and death.

Con­venors:
Han­sjörg Dil­ger (Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin)
Lucia Mair (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vienna)

Chair:
Maria Fer­nan­da Olarte-Sier­ra (Uni­ver­si­ty of Vienna)

Feel free to email if you have any questions!

Warm wish­es on behalf of all convenors,
lucia.mair[at]univie.ac.at

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