Workshop

Birth Rites Col­lec­tion Sum­mer School

Birth Rites Col­lec­tion Sum­mer School 2025

The Sum­mer School is a unique pro­gramme of lec­tures, work­shops, sem­i­nars and one-to-one tuto­ri­als around the Birth Rites Col­lec­tion, the world’s first and only con­tem­po­rary art col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the sub­ject of childbirth.This inten­sive pro­gramme will intro­duce you to the col­lec­tion and facil­i­tate a dia­logue between you, your prac­tice, this year’s themes and the artworks.

The course is led by artist and BRC Cura­tor, Helen Knowles and artist Dr. Leni Dothan, with guest lec­tures from lead­ing artists in the field. The course will empow­er you to artic­u­late your own prac­tice and respons­es to the col­lec­tion in a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment whilst explor­ing crit­i­cal per­spec­tives in the field of birth.

Mid­wives, aca­d­e­mics, cura­tors, artists, medics, health pro­fes­sion­als, art his­to­ri­ans, pol­i­cy advi­sors and the gen­er­al pub­lic, who are inter­est­ed in child­birth through the lens of art, are all wel­come. As a par­tic­i­pant, you will enter the course with your own skill set and fin­ish, with bespoke visu­al, filmic and/or per­for­ma­tive mate­r­i­al, to be used there­after in your own future work.

Work­shops include explor­ing the eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal and visu­al dis­cours­es of birth via text, film, and per­for­mance. Addi­tion­al­ly, this year, we present a unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with a curat­ed selec­tion of works from the col­lec­tion that are not ordi­nar­i­ly acces­si­ble to the public.

Themes include:
– Nav­i­gat­ing mortality—from preterm birth to post-partum
– Artis­tic respons­es to preterm birth.
– How the col­lec­tion informs and unpacks dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives in mid­wifery, med­i­cine and edu­ca­tion, and its poten­tial to improve prac­tice and policy.
– The Collection’s impact on fem­i­nist art prac­tices and the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of visu­al dis­cours­es of birth into art history.
– Cen­sor­ship of art­works on birth, insti­tu­tion­al respons­es, ethics and the law

Speak­ers include: Grisel­da Pol­lock (online keynote), Anna Per­ach, Han­nah Con­way, Court­ney Con­rad, Cather­ine Williamson, Andrea Kho­ra, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more announced soon.

We offer two modal­i­ties for this course: one in per­son, as an inten­sive four-day pro­gram at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent, and one week­ly online course over four weeks, that par­tic­i­pants can join from any­where in the world.

Four-day course (in-per­son):
Dates: July 7–10, 10–5pm BST (with some late evenings)
Loca­tion: Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent, Can­ter­bury, Unit­ed Kingdom
Cost: £650 per per­son / £500 con­ces­sion (for prac­tic­ing artists, stu­dents, and those with a low income).
Capac­i­ty: 15 places per course
Accom­mo­da­tion: On-cam­pus accom­mo­da­tion is avail­able at an addi­tion­al cost.

Four-week course (online):
Dates: Wednes­days, June 11– July 2, 7–9:30pm BST and Sat­ur­day, June 28, 2–5pm BST.
All lec­tures, work­shops, and dis­cus­sions will take place online.
Cost: £550 per per­son / £400 concession.

A £100 deposit is required to secure a place for either course.

To book your place vis­it: https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/summer-school

Permalink

Permalink

Join us for the AgeNet 2025 work­shop in Bratisla­va, Sep­tem­ber 11–12, 2025. Small, inter­ac­tive and cross-dis­ci­pli­nary, it will be an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to col­lec­tive­ly reimag­ine par­tic­i­pa­to­ry approach­es in age­ing research as well as to con­sol­i­date and expand AgeNet’s community. 

Dead­line for appli­ca­tions: May 16, 2025 – more details below, and under this link: https://ageneteasa.org/2025/04/29/agenet-workshop-2025-in-bratislava-call-for-applications-now-open/

📅 When? Sep­tem­ber 11–12, 2025
📍 Where? Bratisla­va, Slovakia

With an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of experts, we will engage in explorato­ry exer­cis­es and prac­ti­cal skill-build­ing in:

✅ Co-design­ing and shared deci­sion-mak­ing with old­er adults and peo­ple with spe­cial needs

✅ Using audio­vi­su­al, cre­ative, and mul­ti­sen­so­ry methods
✅ Shar­ing expe­ri­ences and refin­ing meth­ods together

📝 How to apply? 

If you are inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing, please sub­mit your appli­ca­tion via the Google Form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRpO-co63zd7CyKROgPOHx-nfzsc__amdPxPRfU9OIcvfNwg/viewform?usp=header by May 16, 2025. 

The appli­ca­tion must include a short CV/motivation state­ment (max­i­mum 500 words)

Appli­cants will be noti­fied of the out­come by May 23, 2025.

L’u­bi­ca Vol’an­ská, Francesco Dio­dati, Chris­tine Ver­bruggen, and Mar­ti­na Laganà (Agenet con­venors and mem­bers of the Sci­en­tif­ic and Orga­ni­za­tion­al Committee)

Agenet work­shop 2025 Cfa

Permalink

Dig­i­tal Spaces and DIY Health: Infra­struc­tures, Activism, and Networks
Sep­tem­ber 12, 2025
Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of London 

We seek abstracts for a work­shop at Queen Mary Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don on dig­i­tal health com­mu­ni­ties, infor­mal care path­ways, treat­ment activism, and con­test­ed illness. 

Dig­i­tal spaces pro­vide meet­ing places for peo­ple who are expe­ri­enc­ing symp­toms, man­ag­ing ill­ness­es, and/or seek­ing med­ica­tion through infor­mal routes. Lit­er­a­ture in this area has often con­cen­trat­ed on dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ties that emerge around con­test­ed ill­ness­es because peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing a con­test­ed ill­ness are like­ly to have been turned away by a doc­tor and resort to seek­ing infor­ma­tion and sup­port online. How­ev­er, dig­i­tal health com­mu­ni­ties also emerge around a wide vari­ety of groups whose med­ical needs are stig­ma­tized, whether that’s because of their sex­u­al­i­ty, gen­der iden­ti­ty, or con­tro­ver­sy around the treatment/medication they seek. These types of com­mu­ni­ties self-organ­ise in dig­i­tal spaces where they share expe­ri­ences, pro­vide sup­port, devel­op forms of exper­tise, advise each oth­er on pre­ferred med­ical providers, strate­gise for greater vis­i­bil­i­ty, and facil­i­tate each other’s access to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals that they can­not or do not want to obtain through for­mal channels. 

We seek papers that address these types of dig­i­tal health com­mu­ni­ties, across the spec­trum of med­ical needs that they address and political/geographical con­texts where they reach. We espe­cial­ly seek papers that con­tribute to method­olog­i­cal con­ver­sa­tions around research­ing dig­i­tal health plat­forms which are fast evolv­ing and raise thorny ques­tions about the ethics of research in online spaces.

Poten­tial top­ics may include but are not lim­it­ed to: 

· Online forums and social media as spaces for infor­mal health support

· Infor­mal phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal net­works and online buy­ers’ clubs for HIV pre­ven­tion (e.g., PrEP, PEP, DoxyPEP)

· Self-man­aged repro­duc­tive health (fer­til­i­ty, con­tra­cep­tion, abortion) 

· Trans health care online spaces, espe­cial­ly those for DIY trans care 

· Dig­i­tal plat­forms sup­port­ing com­mu­ni­ties with con­test­ed or chron­ic ill­ness­es (e.g., long COVID, endometrio­sis, chron­ic Lyme)

· Bio­hack­ing inter­ven­tions (e.g. DIY insulin) 

· Activism and polit­i­cal mobil­i­sa­tion by dig­i­tal health communities

· Method­olog­i­cal inter­ven­tions for study­ing dig­i­tal DIY health

· The­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions around self-man­aged health or infor­mal care networks 

We see con­tri­bu­tions from schol­ars across dis­ci­plines (and at any career stage), but this call might be most rel­e­vant to peo­ple in geog­ra­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, pub­lic health, STS, and gen­der stud­ies. We also wel­come papers from practitioners/ activists/ non-aca­d­e­mics. We aim to sub­mit a jour­nal spe­cial issue from the papers fol­low­ing the workshop.

If you’d like to par­tic­i­pate, please sub­mit your abstract (max 300 words) and a short biog­ra­phy to s.calkin@qmul.ac.uk and a.martinezlacabe@qmul.ac.uk by Fri­day June 13, 2025. 

Permalink

2025–10_WS.CommunityProtection_Call for Abstracts

Permalink