Panel

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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CfP for Pan­el at 24th IMISCOE annu­al con­fer­ence: „Unit­ed for Human Rights and Glob­al Equity”
6–9 July 2027
Brus­sels and online

CfPs for the pan­el pro­pos­al below on “The right to (healthy and sus­tain­able) food: an inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive on access, inequal­i­ties and lived expe­ri­ences”. Please send your paper pro­pos­als includ­ing a 250-word abstract and the name(s), affiliation(s), and con­tact details of the author(s) by email to Elsa Mescoli e.mescoli@uliege.be and Paula Fer­nan­dez Gar­cia pfgarcia@uliege.be by 21 Sep­tem­ber 2026 at the lat­est. Please also let us know if you are plan­ning to attend the con­fer­ence in Brus­sels or online.

Pan­el proposal

Title: The right to (healthy and sus­tain­able) food: an inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive on access, inequal­i­ties and lived experiences.

Con­venors: Elsa Mescoli and Paula Fer­nan­dez Gar­cia (Uni­ver­si­ty of Liège)

Abstract: In recent years, the ques­tion of the right to food has become increas­ing­ly sig­nif­i­cant, with grow­ing eco­log­i­cal and pub­lic health con­cerns prompt­ing the devel­op­ment of a wide range of ini­tia­tives to ensure access to healthy, sus­tain­able food for all. Across Europe and beyond, diverse food tran­si­tion ini­tia­tives have emerged in urban areas, call­ing for changes in res­i­dents’ food pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion prac­tices. These ini­tia­tives, which include social gro­cery stores, sol­i­dar­i­ty pur­chas­ing groups, com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and food social secu­ri­ty schemes, often present them­selves as inclu­sive. They seek to engage pop­u­la­tion groups that are typ­i­cal­ly per­ceived as less involved in food tran­si­tion move­ments than pre­dom­i­nant­ly white, mid­dle-class par­tic­i­pants, due to their socio-eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, with migrants often iden­ti­fied as one of the key tar­get groups.

In this pan­el, we exam­ine the right to healthy and sus­tain­able food from three com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives. First, we analyse the poli­cies and mech­a­nisms designed to pro­mote broad access to healthy and sus­tain­able food. Sec­ond­ly, we inves­ti­gate how these mech­a­nisms oper­ate in prac­tice, pay­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to the bar­ri­ers they gen­er­ate and the inequal­i­ties they repro­duce or rein­force. Third­ly, we explore how peo­ple from dif­fer­ent social back­grounds expe­ri­ence these ini­tia­tives in every­day life.

Adopt­ing an inter­sec­tion­al per­spec­tive and draw­ing on empir­i­cal mate­r­i­al from var­i­ous socio-cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal and geo­graph­i­cal con­texts, the pan­el high­light how social posi­tions shaped by struc­tur­al fac­tors that pro­duce and sus­tain socio-eco­nom­ic vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties influ­ence dis­cours­es and ini­tia­tives sur­round­ing the right to healthy and sus­tain­able food, along­side the ways in which indi­vid­u­als nav­i­gate (or remain exclud­ed from) them. 

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