Panel

Cfp for Pan­el „Deserv­ing Bod­ies, Con­test­ed Injuries: Moral Economies of Work­er Health”
Orga­niz­ers: Zeynel Gül (Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, Chica­go) and Gabriela Morales (Scripps College)
Dis­cus­sant: Alex Nad­ing (Cor­nell University)
Nov 18–22, 2026
St. Louis, MO

Deal­dine April 15, 2026

This pan­el cen­ters the moral economies that emerge around sick­ness, injury, and tox­i­c­ex­po­sure stem­ming from work and the work­place. We seek papers that unpack how workers,medical providers, legal experts, occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty experts, and employ­ers eval­u­ate bodilyharm—and its pre­ven­tion and compensation—in the work­place. What kinds of work and whatkinds of harm do these actors ren­der vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble? Giv­en that occu­pa­tion­al health is ahigh­ly state-cen­tered con­cept, what notions of fair­ness, val­ue, and accept­able risk do peo­ple­with occu­pa­tion­al injuries mobi­lize with­in and beyond reg­u­la­to­ry discourses?Occupational health offers a unique van­tage point for observ­ing how the „wor­thi­ness” of lives isd­if­fer­en­tial­ly dis­trib­uted. Fur­ther, the slow vio­lence of chron­ic dis­ease and dis­abil­i­ty due to workex­tends biopol­i­tics beyond the sim­ple bina­ries of liv­ing or dying (Liv­ingston 2005; Puar 2017). Yet, like oth­er bio­med­ical fields (Street 2014), occu­pa­tion­al health is also less sta­ble and uni­fiedthan it might first appear; it requires con­tin­u­al coor­di­na­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion of what con­sti­tuteswork, the work­place, and work­place harm. The mul­ti­plic­i­ty of actors involved in such­co­or­di­na­tion puts pres­sure on per­spec­tives that view the moral econ­o­my as a mono­lithic­concept emerg­ing sole­ly as a response to aggres­sive mar­ket economies (see also Fassin 2015on this point). We ask: what inter­me­di­ary components—such as health sys­tems, families,courts, and bureaucracies—are engaged in the pro­duc­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of morals and val­ue­saround the injured worker’s body? How do the dynam­ic inter­ac­tions between these com­po­nents­gen­er­ate new cat­e­gories, iden­ti­ties, and val­ues while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­pers­ing the knowl­edge­and vis­i­bil­i­ty of harm? Even fur­ther, for work­ers and providers alike, insti­tu­tion­al assess­mentsand com­pen­sa­tion for harm can be unsatisfactory—and lead to alter­na­tive ways of relat­ing toin­jury and expo­sure. How, we ask, might we also reimag­ine what con­sti­tutes health in rela­tion towork (or work in rela­tion to health), with­in and beyond cap­i­tal­ist systems?

Please send a title and an abstract for your paper (of no more than 300 words) togmorales@scrippscollege.edu and zgul2@uic.edu by April 15, 2026

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Invi­ta­tion for open pan­el “Demo­c­ra­t­ic Hori­zons: Hype, Spec­u­la­tion, and the Space for Cri­tique in Bio­med­ical Futures.”
2026 4S Conference
Toron­to, Canada
Octo­ber 7–10, 2026

Sub­mis­sion due date: April 30, 2026. More infor­ma­tion at: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions that address the gov­er­nance and polit­i­cal econ­o­my of bio­med­i­cine and the life sci­ences, includ­ing emerg­ing biotech­nolo­gies and ELSI research. Bring­ing togeth­er per­spec­tives on pow­er, tem­po­ral­i­ty, and the pol­i­tics of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion, the pan­el seeks to explore how more inclu­sive and reflex­ive demo­c­ra­t­ic hori­zons might be imag­ined and enacted.

Con­venors: Alber­to Apari­cio, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Med­ical Branch; Andrew Mur­ray, Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania 

Key­words: Genet­ics, Genomics, Biotech­nol­o­gy; Eco­nom­ics, Mar­kets, Value/Valuation; Med­i­cine and Healthcare

The pan­el descrip­tion is as follows:

What val­ues will guide the future of bio­med­i­cine? STS schol­ar­ship shows that future expec­ta­tions are per­for­ma­tive, reor­ga­niz­ing the present by con­struct­ing visions of where sci­ence and soci­ety are head­ed. Today, these per­for­ma­tive con­struc­tions are pro­found­ly shaped by per­va­sive finan­cial log­ics in bio­med­i­cine. Twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry tech­no­log­i­cal opti­mism is dif­fi­cult to dis­en­tan­gle from hype and spec­u­la­tive val­u­a­tion that frame inno­va­tion as moral­ly urgent, even sal­va­tion­ary. This opti­mism shapes diverse emerg­ing areas of bio­med­ical tech­nol­o­gy: pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, cell and gene ther­a­pies, genome edit­ing, assist­ed repro­duc­tion, and AI-enabled diag­no­sis and drug dis­cov­ery. Advo­cates for these tech­nolo­gies promise to solve social and polit­i­cal prob­lems and cast uncer­tain­ty and con­tes­ta­tion as tem­po­rary obsta­cles on the path to progress.

This pan­el attempts to ground bio­med­ical hype in the every­day work of future-mak­ing. It asks, how are bio­med­ical and health futures being pro­duced and imag­ined, by whom, through what mate­r­i­al-dis­cur­sive infra­struc­tures, and with what con­se­quences? What tools does STS offer for analyzing—and poten­tial­ly reshaping—cycles of hype, solu­tion­ism, and clo­sure? We invite papers that attend to how bio­med­ical futures become cred­i­ble and investable: fund­ing prac­tices; fore­cast­ing and bench­mark­ing; demon­stra­tions and pro­to­types; pol­i­cy roadmaps; clin­i­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry work; moon­shot ini­tia­tives; and data-dri­ven research infra­struc­tures. We also invite con­tri­bu­tions that the­o­rize how broad val­ues like “democ­ra­ti­za­tion” and “inclu­sion” are defined, claimed, and con­test­ed in future-ori­ent­ed bio­med­ical projects. We are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in method­olog­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal insights into work­ing against the grain of total­iz­ing tech­no­log­i­cal­ly deter­min­ist futures, exam­in­ing how alter­na­tive val­ues are artic­u­lat­ed, trans­lat­ed into gov­er­nance, or dis­placed by entre­pre­neur­ial and finan­cial ratio­nales. Final­ly, we wel­come con­tri­bu­tions will­ing to stake empir­i­cal­ly informed nor­ma­tive claims to more just bio­med­ical futures. Across cas­es, the pan­el will inter­ro­gate bio­med­ical futures as instru­ments of author­i­ty in the present and ask what it would mean to fore­ground val­ues beyond mar­ket growth in techno­sci­en­tif­ic futures.

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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.

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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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