Public Health After the Pandemic: Unpacking (Bio-)Moralities

Datum
30. Novem­ber 2026 

Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop, Vienna

CfP for the work­shop “Pub­lic Health After the Pan­dem­ic: Unpack­ing (Bio-)Moralities”
April 1–2, 2027

Health Mat­ters Research Group | Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy & Glob­al Health
Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthropology
Uni­ver­si­ty of Vienna

The call for abstracts is open until Novem­ber 30, 2026. Sub­mit your abstracts, and feel free to cir­cu­late the call!

Approx­i­mate­ly five years after the declared end of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, this inter­na­tion­al work­shop opens a space to reflect on the (bio-)moralities sus­tain­ing pub­lic health. The pan­dem­ic changed pub­lic health and how we engage with it, leav­ing traces that did not dis­ap­pear with the end of the emer­gency dec­la­ra­tion. We invite con­tri­bu­tions that engage with the assump­tions, val­u­a­tions, and jus­ti­fi­ca­tions through which pub­lic health prob­lems and their tar­get pop­u­la­tions are defined, imag­ined, and gov­erned, and that explore whose lives and which forms of life pub­lic health comes to care for.

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions unpack­ing pub­lic health moral­i­ties along three inter­re­lat­ed axes:

- Tem­po­ral­i­ties — how pub­lic health moral­i­ties shape which pasts are remem­bered, which lives are cared for in the present, and which futures are imag­ined and pre­pared for.

- Geo­gra­phies — how pub­lic health moral­i­ties sus­tain or con­test unequal val­u­a­tions of lives across local, region­al, nation­al, glob­al, and plan­e­tary scales.

- Tech­nolo­gies and Infra­struc­tures — how pub­lic health moral­i­ties are mate­ri­al­ized in tech­nolo­gies and infrastructures.

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions from anthro­pol­o­gy, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies, polit­i­cal sci­ence, pub­lic health ethics, glob­al health, and adja­cent fields, engag­ing empir­i­cal­ly, con­cep­tu­al­ly, or method­olog­i­cal­ly with these themes.

Sub­mis­sion: Abstracts of up to 250 words and a short biog­ra­phy (up to 100 words), by Novem­ber 30, 2026, to biomoralities@kl.ac.at. Noti­fi­ca­tions by Decem­ber 15, 2026. 

Accept­ed par­tic­i­pants will cir­cu­late an extend­ed abstract (1,500–3,000 words) by March 12, 2027.

Read the extend­ed call in the attach­ment and stay up to date on the work­shop: https://www.kl.ac.at/en/university/faculties/department-biomedical-and-public-health-ethics/projects/testing-biogovernance

Orga­nized by the „Test­ing (Bio-)Governance” project (Aus­tri­an Sci­ence Fund/FWF): Mara Köh­ler, Paul Just, Ingrid Met­zler (KLU Krems); Erik Aar­den, Jana Kun­schitz, Vic­to­ria Mek­lin (Uni­ver­si­ty of Kla­gen­furt); Keerthi Dub­bala, Julia Aschauer-Geg­n­er (Dept. of Bio­med­ical Ethics and Pub­lic Health Ethics, KLU Krems); Katha­ri­na T. Paul (Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vienna).