Veranstaltungskalender

CfP: Democ­ra­cy as Health; Work­shop and Edit­ed Vol­ume; June 29–30, 2026, Geneva

Call for papers for a work­shop tak­ing place next sum­mer, which intends to lead to an edit­ed vol­ume, titled ‘Democ­ra­cy as Health.’ This event will take place in Gene­va on June 29–30, 2026, orga­nized by myself and Pro­fes­sor Aditya Bharad­waj from the Gene­va Grad­u­ate Insti­tute. We have the hon­or to be joined by keynote speak­ers includ­ing Pro­fes­sors Jes­si­ca Mul­li­gan, San­dra Bärn­reuther, Jan­i­na Kehr, and Ruth Prince. 

The full call for papers is avail­able at the link below, and attached. We encour­age ethno­graph­i­cal­ly ground­ed per­spec­tives across all con­texts. Abstract sub­mis­sions of up to 500 words should be sent to Robert.Smith@graduateinstitute.ch no lat­er than Jan­u­ary 5th, 2026. The work­shop is in per­son. Par­tial fund­ing stipends are avail­able for par­tic­i­pants on a need-based basis. Par­tic­i­pants should indi­cate their inter­est in finan­cial sup­port at the time of their appli­ca­tion. Should you have any ques­tions, please also feel free to reach out to me directly.

CfP:

Glob­al­ly, pub­licly fund­ed health­care has become increas­ing­ly politi­cized with­in demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es over the past decades. Rang­ing from the politi­ciza­tion of the Unit­ed States’ Afford­able Care Act dubbed ‘Oba­maCare,’ the resis­tance to the increas­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Unit­ed Kingdom’s Nation­al Health Ser­vice, pop­ulist polit­i­cal brand­ings of health­care infra­struc­tures in South Asia, or cit­i­zen activism across con­texts, health has increas­ing­ly entered demo­c­ra­t­ic agen­das. Con­trast­ing from 20th cen­tu­ry polit­i­cal move­ments around health­care that gar­nered momen­tum through spe­cif­ic dis­ease cat­e­gories, such as HIV-AIDS (Biehl 2004) or afflic­tion of specif­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized pop­u­la­tions (Petry­na 2013), con­tem­po­rary politi­ciza­tions are increas­ing­ly mobi­liz­ing broad visions of ‘health’ for elec­toral gains (Kehr, Muinde, and Prince 2023; Coop­er, 2019). In many set­tings, such politi­ciza­tions take the form of one-off schemes that are typ­i­cal­ly polit­i­cal­ly tem­po­rary and par­tial in nature, rely­ing on decades of state neglect in health­care to be per­ceived as suc­cess­ful by the elec­torate. Para­dox­i­cal­ly, this ris­ing elec­toral-politi­ciza­tion of health ser­vices and pro­grams also takes place with­in con­texts of ris­ing health austerity. 

There­fore, in this work­shop, we seek to use this emer­gence of health as an explic­it object of elec­toral-polit­i­cal agen­das to think through the con­tem­po­rary rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health, and more broad­ly the pol­i­tics of bio-pol­i­tics. The con­cept of ‘pol­i­tics,’ most broad­ly, has been a long­stand­ing con­cern for med­ical anthro­pol­o­gists’ engage­ment with patients’ expe­ri­ences, and under­stand­ings of pow­er. Sem­i­nal­ly, Foucault’s notion of ‘biopol­i­tics’ has pro­vid­ed a con­cep­tu­al foun­da­tion for med­ical anthro­pol­o­gists to make sense of how process­es of sub­jec­tiviza­tion take place with­in health’s domains, and the gov­ern­men­tal appa­ra­tus­es that ani­mate those process­es. Notably, biopo­lit­i­cal­ly inspired frame­works of pol­i­tics have shaped how anthro­pol­o­gists engage with how patients mobi­lize patho­log­i­cal-bio­log­i­cal iden­ti­ties to place cit­i­zen­ship claims upon the state (Rose and Novas 2005; Biehl 2004; Petry­na 2013; Tick­tin 2011 Nguyen 2010), how bio­med­ical knowl­edge can be used to claim author­i­ty in state spaces (Adams 1998), or how med­i­cine is mobi­lized as a sym­bol of nation­al moder­ni­ty (Broth­er­ton 2012; Al-Dewachi 2017). Yet, neigh­bor­ing dis­ci­plines have point­ed out that the use of pol­i­tics in this lit­er­a­ture may risk con­fin­ing itself to the realm of the bio­log­i­cal, and can “under­mine the polit­i­cal” as an ana­lyt­i­cal cat­e­go­ry by dis­count­ing how oth­er forms of pol­i­tics inter­sect with biol­o­gized pol­i­tics of health (Bird and Lynch 2019). Over­all, the con­cept of ‘pol­i­tics,’ often quick­ly glossed through the ‘pol­i­tics of health,’ main­tains a degree of ambiva­lence in the can­non of med­ical anthropology.

In response, this work­shop seeks to bring togeth­er lead­ing schol­ars to ethno­graph­i­cal­ly think through this in a way that is gen­er­a­tive of nov­el con­cep­tu­al for­mu­la­tions to under­stand the con­tem­po­rary rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health. Democ­ra­cy, in this sense, while ground­ed in process­es of elec­toral-pol­i­tics, is not empir­i­cal­ly con­fined to the prac­tice of vot­ing nor the rit­u­al of elec­tions, but seeks to account for the dif­fer­ent realms of the polit­i­cal that work along­side, with­in, and through, and are also con­struct­ed by, the pol­i­tics of health. In approach­ing these ques­tions, we aim to more explic­it­ly bring togeth­er lit­er­a­ture in med­ical and polit­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy. Doing so par­tic­u­lar­ly takes stalk of how con­cepts of polit­i­cal, affec­tive feel­ings of polit­i­cal exis­tence, and the mate­r­i­al-spec­tral real­i­ties of the state inform sub­jec­tiv­i­ties towards health and care (Aretx­a­ga 2003; Navaro-Yashin 2002; Can­dea 2011; Pos­tero and Eli­noff 2019; Steet 2012; Volle­bergh, Kon­ing, and March­esi, 2021). This inter­sec­tion presents oppor­tu­ni­ties to engage with dif­fer­ent read­ings of biopol­i­tics. Specif­i­cal­ly, ear­ly Fou­cauldian ideas of locat­able, tan­gi­ble ‘veins of pow­er’ — as pos­si­ble to see with­in bio­med­ical clin­ics — as well as lat­er Fou­cauldian ideas that pow­er is every­where — as pos­si­ble to see with­in polit­i­cal affects — which need align­ment in order to under­stand con­tem­po­rary for­ma­tions of democ­ra­cy as health. 

This edit­ed vol­ume revolves around the idea that, amidst ris­ing fas­cist, author­i­tar­i­an ten­den­cies that rely upon health as an elec­toral-polit­i­cal tool, it is increas­ing­ly urgent to reimag­ine the rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health. This vol­ume will seek to revolve around the fol­low­ing cen­tral questions: 

· How does democ­ra­cy reimag­ine the idea of health as an optic, a good, a right, a ser­vice, and more, in rela­tion to the state and the pri­vate sector?
· What do demo­c­ra­t­ic process­es do to the fig­ure of the clin­ic and how does it mod­u­late its gaze?
· What does the rela­tion­ship between democ­ra­cy and health do to imag­i­na­tions and rela­tion­al­i­ties between states and subjects?
· How does health’s elec­toral-polit­i­cal uptake trans­mit into the realm of patient expe­ri­ence, sub­jec­tiv­i­ty and embodiment? 

Full CfP as PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x2s1TAuj-E5nbcM9c9GBcbhC3xF0kMWp/view?usp=drive_link

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Call for papers for „Artic­u­la­tions of Health Data and the Home”
Work­shop organ­ised on behalf of the DARE Project
Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy & Inno­va­tion Stud­ies at Uni­ver­si­ty of Edinburgh

Sub­mit to: abby.king@ed.ac.uk
Dead­line for abstracts (250 words): 30 June 2026
Noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance: 10 July 2026
Work­shop in Edin­burgh: 29 & 30 Octo­ber 2026 

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BIRTH RITES COLLECTION SUMMER SCHOOL 2026 ONLINE
The world’s only con­tem­po­rary art col­lec­tion ded­i­cat­ed to child­birth invites you to a pro­gramme of lec­tures, work­shops, sem­i­nars and one-to-one tutorials.

This Year’s theme: REPRODUCTION AND THE STATE

How do artists con­test dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives of birth and mater­ni­ty? Whose bod­ies are heard, treat­ed and believed in mater­nal health­care? How do states instru­men­talise repro­duc­tion through pol­i­cy, imagery and ide­ol­o­gy? How can the mater­nal become a site of resis­tance and reimagining?

Led by artist and BRC Cura­tor Dr Helen Knowles and artist Dr Leni Dothan, the course brings you into dia­logue with the col­lec­tion, this year’s themes, and your own prac­tice. You’ll leave with bespoke visu­al, tex­tu­al, audi­to­ry, pho­to­graph­ic, filmic or per­for­ma­tive work to car­ry into your future practice.

This year, par­tic­i­pants gain exclu­sive access to a curat­ed selec­tion of works from the col­lec­tion not ordi­nar­i­ly avail­able to the pub­lic, pre­sent­ed in a ded­i­cat­ed online space. Work­shops explore the aes­thet­ic, eth­i­cal, polit­i­cal and visu­al dis­cours­es of birth through text, film and per­for­mance. Lec­tures from lead­ing artists and aca­d­e­mics open up the fol­low­ing themes:

-Insti­tu­tion­al bias in mater­nal health­care — race, class, and the pol­i­tics of care

-Prona­tal­ism, bor­der regimes, and repro­duc­tive justice

-The Collection’s impact on fem­i­nist art and the visu­al his­to­ry of birth

-Cen­sor­ship, ethics and the law around art­works on birth

-How the Col­lec­tion can shape prac­tice and pol­i­cy in mid­wifery, med­i­cine and education

Open to mid­wives, artists, aca­d­e­mics, cura­tors, medics, health pro­fes­sion­als, art his­to­ri­ans, pol­i­cy advi­sors — and any­one engaged with child­birth through the lens of art.

Our 2026 Keynote Speak­er is the renowned video artist, CANDICE BREITZ. Oth­er artists invit­ed to speak are: Sarah Sud­hoff, RAYVENN SHALEIGHA D’CLARK, Andrea Kho­ra, Helen Knowles and Leni Dothan, with more announced soon.

Any ques­tions? Read our FAQs for more infor­ma­tion about the BRC Sum­mer School

Five-Week Course (Online):
Dates: Wednes­days, 7:00 PM – 9:30 PM BST July 1,8,15, 22, 29 & Sat­ur­day 18, 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST. All lec­tures, work­shops, and dis­cus­sions will take place online. Cost: 600 GBP per per­son 450 GBP Con­ces­sion Rate.

A 100GBP deposit is required to secure a place for the course. There is one bur­sary place avail­able. For more infor­ma­tion please email helen@birthrites.org.uk or check out our web­site sum­mer school page: https://www.birthritescollection.org.uk/summerschool2026

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Call for Papers
Work­shop: De-/val­u­a­tions in paid care work
Uni­ver­si­ty of Lucerne, Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthropology
July 2–3, 2026
Orga­nized by Mad­huri­la­ta Basu, Jürg Büh­ler, San­dra Bärnreuther

Research on care work has often paid atten­tion to ques­tions of val­ue and val­u­a­tion: be it the
descrip­tion of care work as a labor of love, empa­thy, and con­cern (Rose 1983), as a source of
sur­plus val­ue (Fed­eri­ci 2012), as a com­mod­i­ty embed­ded in the glob­al econ­o­my (Hochschild
2000, Par­reñas 2000), or as a foun­da­tion for devel­op­ing alter­na­tive eth­i­cal and polit­i­cal theories
(Gilli­gan 1982; Nod­dings 1984; Held 2006, Tron­to 1993). While some stud­ies examine
dif­fer­ent under­stand­ings and prac­tices of good care along­side the ten­sions and contradictions
they pro­duce (Klein­man 2009, Smith-Mor­ris 2018, Steven­son 2014), much of the research on
paid care work empha­sizes issues of deskilling, deval­u­a­tion, and the extrac­tion of val­ue (e.g.,
John and Wich­terich 2023). The gen­der­ing of care work as female, and its links to domestic
and bod­i­ly labor, are shown to be cru­cial in under­stand­ing the exploita­tion and marginalization
of care work­ers, although there are notable dif­fer­ences across var­i­ous groups (Cohen and
Wolkowitz 2018, Ray 2019).

The val­u­a­tion and deval­u­a­tion of care occur through com­plex process­es, includ­ing ongoing
nego­ti­a­tions with larg­er eco­nom­ic and soci­etal struc­tures. Giv­en the high­ly ambigu­ous nature
of these val­u­a­tions, it is easy to over­look that care work­ers them­selves assign mean­ing, moral
sig­nif­i­cance, and val­ue to their work, often in ways that may dif­fer from pop­u­lar and scholarly
descrip­tions and assess­ments. Under­stand­ing these self-per­cep­tions is essen­tial, even though
care work­ers’ voic­es often remain unheard. Trac­ing intri­cate process­es of val­u­a­tion and
deval­u­a­tion by care work­ers and oth­er actors involved in paid care work is there­fore cru­cial for
under­stand­ing how care work is expe­ri­enced and shaped over time.

This work­shop aims to exam­ine val­u­a­tion prac­tices relat­ed to paid care work, empha­siz­ing the
per­spec­tives of var­i­ous actors, includ­ing care­givers, mem­bers of care insti­tu­tions (such as
man­age­ment, edu­ca­tors, and doc­tors), and care recip­i­ents. We fol­low Dus­sauge et al. (2015) in
view­ing value(s) not as “pre­fixed entit[ies] which explain […] action” but treat “the genesis,
artic­u­la­tion, dis­pute, and set­tling of what comes to count as val­ues as mat­ters for empirical
inves­ti­ga­tion and expla­na­tion” (ibid., 6). Through an in-depth analy­sis of the mak­ing of values
in care prac­tice, we seek to under­stand process­es of de-/val­u­a­tion of care work, skills, degrees,
health, and work­ers them­selves. Impor­tant­ly, pow­er is not absent in this approach; to the
con­trary: “By study­ing the mak­ing of val­ues tra­di­tion­al­ly seen as belong­ing to different
domains we can see pow­er strug­gles over which val­ues are to be dom­i­nant, the mak­ing of
bound­aries between val­ues (that may become made as sep­a­rate), and when dif­fer­ent val­ues are
made com­men­su­rable” (ibid.). The work­shop high­lights the con­flict­ing con­cerns and stakes
involved in pro­vid­ing care, as well as how val­u­a­tions are active­ly pro­duced, trans­formed, and
maintained.

We invite ethno­graph­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed schol­ars study­ing paid care work across var­i­ous fields and
regions to join this work­shop. Pos­si­ble top­ics for papers might include: dis­cours­es of de-
/valuation in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and work­places; ratio­nal­iza­tions of dif­fer­ent labor
regimes; rela­tion­ships among dif­fer­ent groups of care work­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al groups;
changes in work­force com­po­si­tion; labor strug­gles and union­iza­tion efforts; the introduction
of new tech­nolo­gies; or care work and the plat­form economy.

Please send your abstract (up to 500 words) and author biog­ra­phy (up to 100 words) by
Jan­u­ary 16, 2026, to madhurilata.basu@unilu.ch. We may have lim­it­ed funds to sup­port travel
and accom­mo­da­tion costs for a few par­tic­i­pants. Please indi­cate in your appli­ca­tion if you
require finan­cial assistance.

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Call for Papers
Work­shop: De-/val­u­a­tions in paid care work
Uni­ver­si­ty of Lucerne, Depart­ment of Social and Cul­tur­al Anthropology

July 2–3, 2026

Orga­nized by Mad­huri­la­ta Basu, Jürg Büh­ler, San­dra Bärnreuther

Research on care work has often paid atten­tion to ques­tions of val­ue and val­u­a­tion: be it the descrip­tion of care work as a labor of love, empa­thy, and con­cern (Rose 1983), as a source of sur­plus val­ue (Fed­eri­ci 2012), as a com­mod­i­ty embed­ded in the glob­al econ­o­my (Hochschild 2000, Par­reñas 2000), or as a foun­da­tion for devel­op­ing alter­na­tive eth­i­cal and polit­i­cal the­o­ries (Gilli­gan 1982; Nod­dings 1984; Held 2006, Tron­to 1993). While some stud­ies exam­ine dif­fer­ent under­stand­ings and prac­tices of good care along­side the ten­sions and con­tra­dic­tions they pro­duce (Klein­man 2009, Smith-Mor­ris 2018, Steven­son 2014), much of the research on paid care work empha­sizes issues of deskilling, deval­u­a­tion, and the extrac­tion of val­ue (e.g., John and Wich­terich 2023). The gen­der­ing of care work as female, and its links to domes­tic and bod­i­ly labor, are shown to be cru­cial in under­stand­ing the exploita­tion and mar­gin­al­iza­tion of care work­ers, although there are notable dif­fer­ences across var­i­ous groups (Cohen and Wolkowitz 2018, Ray 2019).

The val­u­a­tion and deval­u­a­tion of care occur through com­plex process­es, includ­ing ongo­ing nego­ti­a­tions with larg­er eco­nom­ic and soci­etal struc­tures. Giv­en the high­ly ambigu­ous nature of these val­u­a­tions, it is easy to over­look that care work­ers them­selves assign mean­ing, moral sig­nif­i­cance, and val­ue to their work, often in ways that may dif­fer from pop­u­lar and schol­ar­ly descrip­tions and assess­ments. Under­stand­ing these self-per­cep­tions is essen­tial, even though care work­ers’ voic­es often remain unheard. Trac­ing intri­cate process­es of val­u­a­tion and deval­u­a­tion by care work­ers and oth­er actors involved in paid care work is there­fore cru­cial for under­stand­ing how care work is expe­ri­enced and shaped over time.

This work­shop aims to exam­ine val­u­a­tion prac­tices relat­ed to paid care work, empha­siz­ing the per­spec­tives of var­i­ous actors, includ­ing care­givers, mem­bers of care insti­tu­tions (such as man­age­ment, edu­ca­tors, and doc­tors), and care recip­i­ents. We fol­low Dus­sauge et al. (2015) in view­ing value(s) not as “pre­fixed entit[ies] which explain […] action” but treat “the gen­e­sis, artic­u­la­tion, dis­pute, and set­tling of what comes to count as val­ues as mat­ters for empir­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion and expla­na­tion” (ibid., 6). Through an in-depth analy­sis of the mak­ing of val­ues in care prac­tice, we seek to under­stand process­es of de-/val­u­a­tion of care work, skills, degrees, health, and work­ers them­selves. Impor­tant­ly, pow­er is not absent in this approach; to the con­trary: “By study­ing the mak­ing of val­ues tra­di­tion­al­ly seen as belong­ing to dif­fer­ent domains we can see pow­er strug­gles over which val­ues are to be dom­i­nant, the mak­ing of bound­aries between val­ues (that may become made as sep­a­rate), and when dif­fer­ent val­ues are made com­men­su­rable” (ibid.). The work­shop high­lights the con­flict­ing con­cerns and stakes involved in pro­vid­ing care, as well as how val­u­a­tions are active­ly pro­duced, trans­formed, and maintained.

We invite ethno­graph­i­cal­ly ori­ent­ed schol­ars study­ing paid care work across var­i­ous fields and regions to join this work­shop. Pos­si­ble top­ics for papers might include: dis­cours­es of de-/val­u­a­tion in edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions and work­places; ratio­nal­iza­tions of dif­fer­ent labor regimes; rela­tion­ships among dif­fer­ent groups of care work­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­al groups; changes in work­force com­po­si­tion; labor strug­gles and union­iza­tion efforts; the intro­duc­tion of new tech­nolo­gies; or care work and the plat­form economy.

Please send your abstract (up to 500 words) and author biog­ra­phy (up to 100 words) by Jan­u­ary 16, 2026, to madhurilata.basu@unilu.ch. We may have lim­it­ed funds to sup­port trav­el and accom­mo­da­tion costs for a few par­tic­i­pants. Please indi­cate in your appli­ca­tion if you require finan­cial assistance.

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Health­care Improve­ment Sum­mer School
8th-10th July, 2026
Leices­ter Tigers Rug­by Club­house in Leices­ter, UK

The SAPPHIRE (Social Sci­ence APPlied Health­care & Improve­ment Research) research group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter are pleased to announce our pop­u­lar Ethnog­ra­phy for Health­care Improve­ment Sum­mer School will be offered again in 2026, and will run 8th-10th July, 2026, at Leices­ter Tigers Rug­by Club­house in Leices­ter, UK. This short course is designed for Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tors, Researchers and Doc­tor­al Stu­dents to crit­i­cal­ly engage with the the­o­ry and prac­tice of ethnog­ra­phy in health­care set­tings. Over 3 days, you will learn more about the use of ethnog­ra­phy for health­care improve­ment, from design­ing research to man­ag­ing improve­ment and eval­u­a­tion ten­sions, nav­i­gat­ing dif­fer­ent con­texts, reach­ing audi­ences and influ­enc­ing pol­i­cy and prac­tice. Addi­tion­al­ly, you will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op a net­work of fel­low prac­ti­tion­ers and researchers with shared method­olog­i­cal inter­ests, work with expe­ri­enced ethno­g­ra­phers as men­tors, and join an inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice around ethnog­ra­phy for health­care improve­ment. The cost of the 3 day course, includ­ing all edu­ca­tion mate­ri­als and activ­i­ties, plus lunch and refresh­ments all days, is £1000 (inclu­sive of VAT). Trans­port to and from the venue and accom­mo­da­tion is not includ­ed, and should be arranged indi­vid­u­al­ly by delegates.

Reg­is­tra­tions are strict­ly lim­it­ed, and are now open at https://shop.le.ac.uk/product-catalogue/events-at-leicester/health-sciences/ethnography-for-healthcare-improvement-summer-school-2026; book­ings will close 31st May 2026. A wait­ing list will be main­tained in the event of the course being over-sub­scribed. Please for­ward any ques­tions to Jen­nifer Creese, course lead: jennifer.creese@leicester.ac.uk.

Best wish­es, Dr Jen­nifer Creese (BA, MIM, PhD, FHEA) (She/Her/Hers)
Lec­tur­er, School of Med­ical Sci­ences – Pub­lic Health and Epi­demi­ol­o­gy Divi­sion (SAPPHIRE Group)
Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter, George Davies Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty Road, Leices­ter LE1 7RH UK

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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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Invi­ta­tion for open pan­el „ ‚Human­i­tar­i­an Reset,’ Tech­nop­o­l­i­tics and the Infra­struc­tures of Aid”
2026 4S Conference
Toron­to, Canada
Octo­ber 7–10, 2026

Dead­line for sub­mis­sion: April 30, 2026

4S Open Pan­el #111

Orga­niz­ers:
Roda Siad, McGill University
Alphonci­na Lya­muya, Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern California

Abstract:
In 2025, the UN’s Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­i­an Affairs called for a ‘human­i­tar­i­an reset’ amid pro­lif­er­at­ing crises, ris­ing dis­place­ment, and shrink­ing donor fund­ing. Framed as a rad­i­cal reform moment, the ‘reset’ has emerged as a dom­i­nant term for grap­pling with pro­found sec­tor-wide insti­tu­tion­al stress. Ini­tia­tives such as UN80 and the ‘reset’ are posi­tioned as oppor­tu­ni­ties to reimag­ine how aid is orga­nized and deliv­ered by stream­lin­ing coor­di­na­tion, embrac­ing antic­i­pa­to­ry action, pri­or­i­tiz­ing assis­tance, devolv­ing author­i­ty to local actors, and mobi­liz­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ships to do “more with less.” Yet these reforms are not mere­ly neu­tral or tech­ni­cal. They rep­re­sent a recon­fig­u­ra­tion of pow­er with­in human­i­tar­i­an sys­tems, enact­ed through the reset as a tech­no-polit­i­cal project.
We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of human­i­tar­i­an­ism and sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies to exam­ine the reset, its promis­es, under­ly­ing assump­tions, and how it is shaped by, and pro­duc­tive of, technopow­er. We ask: how are aid infra­struc­tures, includ­ing data gov­er­nance sys­tems, cash deliv­ery plat­forms, fore­cast­ing tools, pri­or­i­tized aid mech­a­nisms, and account­abil­i­ty frame­works, being redesigned under con­di­tions of aus­ter­i­ty and urgency? What sociotech­ni­cal imag­i­nar­ies shape reforms pro­posed under the reset, and how are they entan­gled with ideas of effi­cien­cy, exper­tise, inno­va­tion, mar­ket log­ics, and new forms of pub­lic-pri­vate author­i­ty? How do calls to “shift pow­er clos­er to com­mu­ni­ties” inter­sect with expand­ing tech­no­log­i­cal medi­a­tion and data-inten­sive sys­tems that may simul­ta­ne­ous­ly enable and under­mine local agency?
This pan­el fore­grounds the reset as an ongo­ing, con­test­ed process rather than a set­tled reform agen­da. Con­tri­bu­tions may engage empir­i­cal­ly, the­o­ret­i­cal­ly, or con­cep­tu­al­ly with top­ics includ­ing local­iza­tion and account­abil­i­ty, antic­i­pa­to­ry action and ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, pro­tec­tion issues, human­i­tar­i­an-cor­po­rate col­lab­o­ra­tion, activism, and advo­ca­cy under shrink­ing human­i­tar­i­an foot­prints. We wel­come sub­mis­sions explor­ing ten­sions between effi­cien­cy and care, inno­va­tion and jus­tice, decen­tral­iza­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty-shift­ing, and tech­no­crat­ic exper­tise and lived experiences.

Sub­mis­sion guide­lines and addi­tion­al pan­el details (pan­el #111) can be found here.

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