Veranstaltungskalender

Call for paper to the pan­el on the top­ic „Cli­mate change, island change, and well­be­ing in small island communities”
Health, Envi­ron­ment, and AnThro­pol­o­gy (HEAT)
Durham
23 – 24 April 2025
co-organ­ised by Durham and Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ties and spon­sored by the Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Soci­ety (RAI)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Pan­el: “Cli­mate change, island change, and well­be­ing in small island communities”

Sur­round­ed by sea, islands have long been seen as remote and iso­lat­ed by neces­si­ty, though island life in prac­tice involves move­ment both out of and back towards the island (Kohn, 2006; Nic Craith, 2020). With­out enough atten­tion being paid to the needs of island com­mu­ni­ties in deci­sion- and pol­i­cy-mak­ing affect­ing them, islands are also fre­quent­ly asso­ci­at­ed with vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty (Kot­sira, 2021), among oth­ers rais­ing con­cerns about their sus­tain­abil­i­ty and resilience (Rat­ter, 2017). If island life is already chal­leng­ing as such, what is the fur­ther impact of cli­mate change and cli­mate-induced dis­as­ters on the men­tal health and well­be­ing of islanders, par­tic­u­lar­ly in small island communities?

This pan­el invites papers dis­cussing ethno­graph­ic exam­ples and pri­ma­ry research cov­er­ing aspects such as:

‑Local under­stand­ings of men­tal health and well­be­ing, and whether/how they are impact­ed by the cli­mate cri­sis and the ways islanders respond to chang­ing circumstances.
Access to men­tal health ser­vices and ser­vice gaps to be addressed so small island pop­u­la­tions fac­ing the by-prod­ucts of cli­mate change are supported.
‑How pre­con­cep­tions of remote­ness and iso­la­tion, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and resilience are chal­lenged by the cir­cum­stances cre­at­ed by the cli­mate crisis
local­ly, and their impact on men­tal health and wellbeing.
‑The role of cli­mate change in con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tions of the future on/of small islands, feel­ings of uncer­tain­ty, and their impact on islanders’ men­tal health and
wellbeing.
‑How the men­tal health and well­be­ing of researchers are affect­ed while doing research on small islands impact­ed by the cli­mate cri­sis, includ­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms and
research strategies.

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION GUIDANCE

The dead­line for sub­mis­sions is 13 Jan­u­ary 2025.

Please sub­mit your paper abstract through the con­fer­ence por­tal here: https://pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham/abstract/info

Once you access the portal:

Choose from the drop-down menu the event you wish to attend: Health, Envi­ron­ment, and AnThro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) 2025.
Fill in your per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al details.
Pro­vide the title of the paper you wish to present.
Select talk from the list of pre­sen­ta­tion options.
Upload your paper abstract. Your abstract must me no more than 250 words, and attached as a .doc or .pdf file (max­i­mum upload size 10 MB).
Select from the drop-down menu the title of the pan­el you wish to join: Cli­mate change, island change, and well­be­ing in small island communities.

You do not have to be an RAI or ASA mem­ber to pro­pose a paper, but please note that only papers sub­mit­ted via con­fer­ence por­tal will be considered.
More infor­ma­tion about the con­fer­ence can be found on the web­site: https://pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham/health-environment-and-anthropology-heat-2024

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Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthropology
23–24 April 2025
Durham University

As the world is get­ting fuller, faster, hot­ter, and sick­er, HEAT asks how can anthro­pol­o­gists con­tribute to unfold­ing debates around health and envi­ron­ment on a chang­ing and unequal plan­et? In what ways can med­ical and envi­ron­men­tal anthro­pol­o­gy work togeth­er and with oth­er dis­ci­plines, com­mu­ni­ties, and stake­hold­ers to help sup­port the devel­op­ment of knowl­edge and resources for respond­ing to envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and glob­al heating?

As envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate trans­form soci­eties and ecolo­gies around the world, it is imper­a­tive that anthro­pol­o­gists con­tin­ue to seek new ways of think­ing and speak­ing among them­selves and with oth­ers about the rela­tion­ships among humans, oth­er-than-humans, the envi­ron­ment, and the plan­et. By exam­in­ing the intri­cate web of inter­de­pen­den­cies between soci­eties, ecosys­tems, and envi­ron­men­tal process­es, anthro­pol­o­gists have an impor­tant role to play in under­stand­ing and address­ing the com­plex chal­lenges faced by our planet.

Pan­el pro­pos­als are invit­ed in the fol­low­ing and relat­ed areas:

• Chang­ing pat­terns and pro­files of health, ill­ness, and dis­ease in response to envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate change
• Chang­ing human and more-than-human entan­gle­ments in rela­tion to envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate change
• Social move­ments and new forms of social­i­ty aris­ing from con­cerns about plan­e­tary health
• Envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, inequal­i­ty, and mar­gin­al­ized communities
• Demo­graph­ic anx­i­eties and the effects of migra­tion, dis­place­ment, and armed con­flict in the con­text of chang­ing environments
• Impacts of cli­mate change on repro­duc­tive health and rights
• Diverse eco­log­i­cal knowl­edges and indige­nous per­spec­tives on plan­e­tary health
• Sus­tain­able food sys­tems, agri­cul­ture, and nutrition
• Urban­iza­tion, glob­al­iza­tion, and the trans­for­ma­tion of human-envi­ron­ment relationships
• Health impacts of extrac­tive indus­tries and resource exploitation
• Eth­i­cal and/or method­olog­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions in plan­e­tary health research and interventions
• Pol­i­cy inter­ven­tions and gov­er­nance for plan­e­tary health
• Tech­no­log­i­cal and design inno­va­tions for improv­ing plan­e­tary health and deal­ing with the health impacts of envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and glob­al heating
• Men­tal health and well­be­ing in the con­text of cli­mate change
• Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­nec­tions, includ­ing engage­ment with the Over­laps and con­tention between the frame­works of Plan­e­tary Health, Glob­al Health, and One Health.

Pan­el pro­pos­als should include a title and 250 word abstract. The dead­line is Sep­tem­ber 2024. A Call for Papers will then follow.

To sub­mit a pan­el abstract, please fol­low this link: https://pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham/health-environment-and-anthropology-heat-2024

Email the con­fer­ence organ­is­ers at anthro.heat.conference@gmail.com

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Call for Pan­els „Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthropology”
23–24 April 2025
Durham Uni­ver­si­ty in UK
Orga­nized by the The Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insti­tute, Uni­ver­si­ty of Durham & Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh present

As the world is get­ting fuller, faster, hot­ter, and sick­er, HEAT asks how can anthro­pol­o­gists con­tribute to unfold­ing debates around health and envi­ron­ment on a chang­ing and unequal plan­et? In what ways can med­ical and envi­ron­men­tal anthro­pol­o­gy work togeth­er and with oth­er dis­ci­plines, com­mu­ni­ties, and stake­hold­ers to help sup­port the devel­op­ment of knowl­edge and resources for respond­ing to envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and glob­al heating?

As envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate trans­form soci­eties and ecolo­gies around the world, it is imper­a­tive that anthro­pol­o­gists con­tin­ue to seek new ways of think­ing and speak­ing among them­selves and with oth­ers about the rela­tion­ships among humans, oth­er-than-humans, the envi­ron­ment, and the plan­et. By exam­in­ing the intri­cate web of inter­de­pen­den­cies between soci­eties, ecosys­tems, and envi­ron­men­tal process­es, anthro­pol­o­gists have an impor­tant role to play in under­stand­ing and address­ing the com­plex chal­lenges faced by our planet.

Pan­el pro­pos­als are invit­ed in the fol­low­ing and relat­ed areas:

Chang­ing pat­terns and pro­files of health, ill­ness, and dis­ease in response to envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate change

• Chang­ing human and more-than-human entan­gle­ments in rela­tion to envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate change
• Social move­ments and new forms of social­i­ty aris­ing from con­cerns about plan­e­tary health
• Envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, inequal­i­ty, and mar­gin­al­ized communities
  Demo­graph­ic anx­i­eties and the effects of migra­tion, dis­place­ment, and armed con­flict in the con­text of chang­ing environments
• Impacts of cli­mate change on repro­duc­tive health and rights
  Diverse eco­log­i­cal knowl­edges and indige­nous per­spec­tives on plan­e­tary health
  Sus­tain­able food sys­tems, agri­cul­ture, and nutrition
• Urban­iza­tion, glob­al­iza­tion, and the trans­for­ma­tion of human-envi­ron­ment relationships
• Health impacts of extrac­tive indus­tries and resource exploitation
  Eth­i­cal and/or method­olog­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions in plan­e­tary health research and interventions
• Pol­i­cy inter­ven­tions and gov­er­nance for plan­e­tary health
  Tech­no­log­i­cal and design inno­va­tions for improv­ing plan­e­tary health and deal­ing with the health impacts of envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and glob­al heating
  Men­tal health and well­be­ing in the con­text of cli­mate change
• Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­nec­tions, includ­ing engage­ment with the Over­laps and con­tention between the frame­works of Plan­e­tary Health, Glob­al Health, and One Health.

Pan­el pro­pos­als should include a title and 250 word abstract. The dead­line is 30th Sep­tem­ber 2024. A Call for Papers will then follow.

To sub­mit a pan­el abstract, please fol­low this link: https://pay.durham.ac.uk/event-durham/health-environment-and-anthropology-heat-2024

Email the con­fer­ence organ­is­ers at anthro.heat.conference@gmail.com

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We are delight­ed to share details on the forth­com­ing Health, Envi­ron­ment, and AnThro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) conference
23rd and 24th April 2025
Durham Uni­ver­si­ty and online

Please fol­low this link for details and program

The HEAT team

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Pan­el on “Influ­ence of Chang­ing Ecolo­gies on Health and Human Adap­ta­tion at Local, Nation­al and Glob­al level”
HEAT 2025
Durham Uni­ver­si­ty (UK)
April 23–24, 2025
Dead­line 13 Jan­u­ary 2025

Pan­el Abstract:
In Anthro­pol­o­gy, research on inter­ac­tions and the com­plex net­work of humans, health and envi­ron­ment start­ed ear­ly with the cul­tur­al ecol­o­gy the­o­ry and med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy in the 1930s and 1960s respec­tive­ly. The focus theme of these approach­es had been adap­ta­tion includ­ing fac­tors of genet­ics, phys­i­ol­o­gy, cul­ture and the approach­es assumed that health is deter­mined by envi­ron­men­tal adap­ta­tion and that dis­eases arise from envi­ron­men­tal imbal­ances. Fur­ther stud­ies are required to under­stand the con­sump­tion pat­terns which are asso­ci­at­ed with health risks affect­ing human biol­o­gy, ecol­o­gy and the epi­demi­ol­o­gy of emerg­ing and reemerg­ing dis­eases. As researchers, the press­ing ques­tion is the present sce­nario of region­al, nation­al and glob­al affairs such as cli­mate change, food inse­cu­ri­ty, envi­ron­men­tal health, demo­graph­ic shifts, etc. Though there are ongo­ing con­sis­tent efforts to iden­ti­fy strate­gies and bring out solu­tions, yet, it requires exten­sive stud­ies on eco­log­i­cal changes and the asso­ci­at­ed health dis­par­i­ties. With this back­drop, the pan­el invites papers/studies con­duct­ed with­in (but not lim­it­ed to) South Asia to explore the cross-cul­tur­al impact of eco­log­i­cal changes on pop­u­la­tions. It seeks to high­light health dis­par­i­ties aris­ing from these changes and have an in-depth dis­cus­sion on region­al-spe­cif­ic health impli­ca­tions, as well as include trends in research method­ol­o­gy. The pan­el, in con­clu­sion, will be address­ing the ‘Ecol­o­gy-Human Adap­ta­tion Imbal­ance’ and will try to iden­ti­fy the loop­holes and bring out prob­a­ble alter­na­tives for region-spe­cif­ic populations.

The pan­el will explore the extent to which chang­ing envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions bring about adverse health con­se­quences and adap­tive imbal­ance under var­i­ous eco­log­i­cal con­di­tions. The pan­el invites papers on the theme of ‘Ecol­o­gy-Human Adap­ta­tion Imbal­ance’ in the con­text of the fol­low­ing areas-

Tra­di­tion­al and mar­gin­alised communities.

Urban ecology.

Food environment.

Demog­ra­phy and access to Pub­lic Health. 

Age­ing and Envi­ron­ment Interaction

Adap­ta­tion to eco­log­i­cal vulnerabilities.

You can sub­mit your abstracts in the Abstract Man­age­ment Por­tal on or before 13 Jan­u­ary 2025. The abstract should not be more than 250 words and the above link pro­vides fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the process of abstract sub­mis­sion. All papers must be sub­mit­ted via the sub­mis­sion point on the con­fer­ence web­site (below). This should be uploaded in .doc or .pdf for­mat. Pro­pos­als must con­sist of:

Title of the pan­el you wish join;

The title of the paper you wish to present;

An abstract of no more than 250 words.

Paper pro­pos­als will be reviewed by pan­el convenor(s) and a deci­sion on whether the paper has been accept­ed or reject­ed will come from them.

Only papers sub­mit­ted via the link below will be con­sid­ered by pan­el convenors.

Web­site Link- Event Durham – Abstract Management 

Rules

You do not have to be an RAI or ASA mem­ber to pro­pose a paper.

You may only present once at the con­fer­ence. Pan­el chairs and dis­cus­sants may also present a paper on a dif­fer­ent panel.

All those attend­ing the con­fer­ence, includ­ing dis­cus­sants and chairs, will need to reg­is­ter and pay to attend.

For any query, kind­ly con­tact: karvileena@gauhati.ac.in

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CFP below for a pan­el on „Inti­mate medi­a­tion: hor­mones and endocrine dis­rup­tion across species, place, and time”
2025 Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Conference
Durham Uni­ver­si­ty, UK
April 23–24, 2025
Co-organ­ised by Durham and Edin­burgh uni­ver­si­ties and spon­sored by the Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Soci­ety (RAI)

The call is sched­uled to close on 13 Jan­u­ary, although we will keep this under review and extend if it seems necessary. 

Abstracts can be sub­mit­ted via the Abstract Man­age­ment por­tal. The web­site includes guid­ance and a list of pan­els a pro­pos­er can select from. 

Pan­el #21: „Inti­mate medi­a­tion: hor­mones and endocrine dis­rup­tion across species, place, and time”

Key­words: hor­mones, chem­i­cals, endocrine dis­rup­tion, EDCs, plas­tics, pre­scrip­tion drugs, side effects, alter­life, green chemistry

This pan­el invites con­sid­er­a­tion of endocrine dis­rupt­ing chem­i­cals (EDCs) as a key link between health and envi­ron­ment. EDCs are syn­thet­ic chem­i­cals that inter­act with the hor­mon­al mes­sag­ing process­es of humans and oth­er ani­mals, com­mon­ly found in every­day items, notably many plas­tics. These ubiq­ui­tous sub­stances tran­scend local envi­ron­ments through weath­er pat­terns and indus­tri­al chains, defy con­sumer ratio­nales of per­son­al pro­tec­tion through „organ­ic” or „green” choic­es, and have effects that are unpre­dictable and may remain latent for gen­er­a­tions. EDCs are now con­sti­tu­tive of our bod­ies, com­pli­cat­ing any ideas about an un-altered „pure” state, and have been linked to health issues as dis­parate as dia­betes, endometrio­sis, asth­ma, ear­ly puber­ty, obe­si­ty, and gen­der dys­pho­ria. There is good rea­son to con­sid­er hor­mon­al­ly-active phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals as EDCs, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en how they can exceed the consumer’s bod­i­ly sys­tem and enter into water­ways and oth­er shared envi­ron­ments. EDCs trou­ble stan­dard polit­i­cal posi­tions around indi­vid­ual auton­o­my and choice, com­pli­cat­ing con­ser­v­a­tive impuls­es towards pro­tec­tion­ism and immu­ni­ty. Study­ing „the expo­some” trou­bles stan­dard ways of mak­ing knowl­edge about chem­i­cals: chem­i­cal effects come into being in inter­ac­tion with one anoth­er instead of as iso­lat­ed vari­ables, and tim­ing of expo­sure often mat­ters more than dosage (counter to the tox­i­co­log­i­cal max­im ‚the dose makes the poi­son’). Add to this the lob­by­ing pres­sure from petro­le­um and chem­i­cal indus­tries, and it is clear why it can be pro­found­ly dif­fi­cult to acknowl­edge and take action about EDCs. Yet, some med­ical research cen­ters, activist groups, artists, and even indus­tri­al ini­tia­tives around „green chem­istry” are doing so. This nexus begs fur­ther anthro­po­log­i­cal inquiry. 

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Pan­el on „More-than-human health in an inter­de­pen­dent world”
Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Conference
Uni­ver­si­ty of Durham
April 23–24 2025
CfP dead­line: 13 Jan
With Wim Van Daele (UiA), Hei­di Fjeld (UiO), Jelle Wouters (RTC), and Ele­na Neri (UiA)

Details: The con­cepts of One Health, Plan­e­tary Health, and Eco-Health fore­ground the depen­den­cy of human health on the health of the envi­ron­ment. In sci­en­tif­ic prac­tice, these con­cepts tend to focus most­ly on the sci­en­tif­ic bio­log­i­cal and tan­gi­ble social aspects of the inter­de­pen­den­cies between the human and non-human aspects of health, neglect­ing the role played by intan­gi­ble and invis­i­ble oth­er-than-human enti­ties. Hence, we adopt the notion of “more-than-human health” to enhance atten­tive­ness to dif­fer­ent onto­log­i­cal and relat­ed (micro)biosocial prac­tices of human and oth­er-than-human health and well-being across the world.

This pan­el invites con­tri­bu­tions that explore com­plex inter­de­pen­den­cies and entan­gle­ments between human beings and visible/tangible and invisible/intangible oth­er-than human enti­ties that in their entan­gle­ment shape more-than-human health. We invite inter­dis­ci­pli­nary ori­ent­ed papers that exam­ine the (micro)biosocial con­nec­tions between invis­i­ble and (sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly made) vis­i­ble aspects in the more-than-human inter­de­pen­dent prac­tice of craft­ing health and well­be­ing across dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions and ontolo­gies. We wel­come par­tic­u­lar­ly papers that attest to the sit­u­at­ed (micro)biosocialities with­in these onto­log­i­cal prac­tices in more-than-human health. This can include, but is not lim­it­ed to, papers explor­ing entan­gle­ments between:

rit­u­al prac­tices and microbiomes,
cos­mol­o­gy, cli­mate change, and chang­ing health practices,
super­nat­ur­al enti­ties, ani­mals, and microbiomes,
epi­ge­net­ics, stress and food environments,

and more under­ex­plored interdependencies…

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Call for abstracts to a pan­el on „Scal­ing tox­ic expo­sure; inter­gen­er­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ty, care and plan­e­tary health”
Health, Envi­ron­ment, and Anthro­pol­o­gy (HEAT) Conference
Durham Uni­ver­si­ty (UK)
April 23–24, 2025

The call is sched­uled to close on 13 January

If you are inter­est­ed, please sub­mit an abstract via the Abstract Man­age­ment por­tal. The web­site includes guid­ance on how papers should be sub­mit­ted and a drop down list of pan­els a pro­pos­er can select from. 

Details: Scal­ing tox­ic expo­sure; inter­gen­er­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ty, care and plan­e­tary health 

Chem­i­cal expo­sure and their poten­tial tox­ic arrange­ments are inter­gen­er­a­tional, cross­ing lines of kin­ship and con­nect­ing rela­tions to mol­e­cules, mul­ti­ple bod­ies, ecolo­gies and social spaces through non-lin­ear tem­po­ral­i­ties. This presents sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges for ethno­graph­ic research con­fronting scales of expo­sure in the con­text of plan­e­tary health, esca­lat­ing cli­mate and eco­log­i­cal crises, pro­found inequal­i­ty, and ongo­ing colo­nial for­ma­tions. In mil­i­tary cam­paigns dev­as­tat­ing lives, geno­cide brings eco­cide. There is a need to exam­ine the nov­el con­fig­u­ra­tions of inter­gen­er­a­tional respon­si­bil­i­ty, jus­tice and care which arise at these junc­tures, as they index pos­si­bil­i­ties for oth­er ways of life. This requires cre­ative ori­en­ta­tions to method, con­cepts and the­o­ry to address the com­plex tem­po­ral and spa­tial scales of tox­ic exposure. 

Our pan­el seeks con­tri­bu­tions from those engag­ing with chem­i­cal expo­sures and ques­tions of inter­gen­er­a­tional time and social rela­tions with­in anthro­pol­o­gy and/or in dia­logue with oth­er dis­ci­plines and those address­ing the method­olog­i­cal chal­lenges and con­cep­tu­al approach­es relat­ed to these themes. 

Our pan­el is guid­ed but not lim­it­ed to the fol­low­ing questions: 

-How can inter­gen­er­a­tional chem­i­cal expo­sure be exam­ined giv­en that tem­po­ral­i­ty of tox­i­c­i­ty is not linear?
‑What are the pos­si­bil­i­ties for action – for our­selves as researchers, for our research com­mu­ni­ties, and for wider groups entan­gled in these land­scapes – if con­ven­tion­al mech­a­nisms of causal­i­ty do not apply?
‑If the mate­ri­al­i­ty and laten­cy of chem­i­cal expo­sure artic­u­lates an absence in the present how can we exam­ine the per­va­sive and elu­sive­ness of toxicity?
‑What kinds of ethno­graph­ic (re)orientations are required to crit­i­cal­ly ori­ent to the mul­ti­ple tem­po­ral­i­ties of chem­i­cal tox­i­c­i­ty? What can the work of com­par­i­son facil­i­tate in exam­in­ing scales of tox­ic exposure?

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Abschlusskon­ferenz des deutsch-franzö­sis­chen Forschung­spro­jek­ts „The Social Pro­duc­tion of Space and Age” (SPAGE)

More info: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/128738740/SPAGE

Die Kon­ferenz „Cross­ing Bound­aries: Transna­tion­al and Trans­dis­ci­pli­nary Per­spec­tives on (Re)Configurations of Space in Age­ing Soci­eties“ find­et am 26. & 27. Mai 2025 an der Goethe-Uni­ver­sität Frank­furt am Main, Cam­pus Wes­t­end, Casi­no, Raum
1.801 (Renate von Met­zler-Saal) statt.

Es erwarten Sie span­nende Vorträge und Diskus­sio­nen zu Per­spek­tiv­en auf das Zusam­men­spiel von Altern und Raum aus unter­schiedlichen Diszi­plinen und Län­dern. Das detail­lierte Pro­gramm find­en Sie hier: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/170314818.pdf

Wir freuen uns über Ihre Teil­nahme. Zur Reg­istrierung nutzen Sie bitte diesen Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/crossing-boundaries-final-conference-of-research-project-spage-26–2705-tickets-1209545586409?aff=oddtdtcreator

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Call for Pan­els: RAI FILM Online Con­fer­ence 2025: „Where Are We Now? Visu­al and Mul­ti­modal Anthropology”
28 April – 2 May 2025 (Online only)

RAI FILM and the Film Com­mit­tee of the Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insti­tute invites pan­el, round­table, and work­shop pro­pos­als on any facet of visu­al, mul­ti­sen­so­ry and mul­ti­modal Anthro­pol­o­gy. We want to redou­ble our efforts to achieve a bet­ter and more sus­tain­able future for all by learn­ing more about how anthro­pol­o­gists are using these meth­ods to respond to glob­al chal­lenges of our times. We encour­age pre­sen­ta­tions that explore emer­gent method­olo­gies and inter­ac­tive approach­es. We offer an inclu­sive forum to explore cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive approach­es, dis­cuss col­lab­o­ra­tive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry meth­ods and tack­le prac­ti­cal problems.
Pos­si­ble areas of con­tem­po­rary inter­est might be dia­logues between emer­gent and exist­ing forms of film mak­ing; AI and chang­ing tech­nolo­gies (extend­ed real­i­ty (XR); sto­ry­telling and nar­ra­tive, indige­nous film­mak­ing; ani­ma­tion, and aesthetics.
In addi­tion to this open call, we are also look­ing to high­light the glob­al chal­lenges for visu­al and mul­ti­modal anthro­pol­o­gy. We ask how visu­al and mul­ti­modal meth­ods can help to address the glob­al chal­lenges of our times. We want to learn how anthro­pol­o­gists are using visu­al and mul­ti­modal tools to respond to issues such as inequal­i­ty, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, pover­ty, cli­mate change, war, and jus­tice. We wel­come engage­ment with top­ics such as food and hunger, water, migra­tion, forced dis­place­ment, extrem­ism and intol­er­ance, social inequal­i­ties, men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, dis­crim­i­na­tion and geno­cide, peace and jus­tice, cli­mate change and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, renew­ables and just economies.
This vir­tu­al con­fer­ence sits along­side the RAI FILM Fes­ti­val which is a bien­ni­al inter­na­tion­al event cel­e­brat­ing the best in doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing from around the globe and estab­lished in 1985 by the Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insti­tute (UK). The fes­ti­val show­cas­es new work from aca­d­e­m­ic anthro­pol­o­gists and relat­ed dis­ci­plines, and from film­mak­ers at all lev­els of expe­ri­ence from stu­dents to pro­fes­sion­als. It looks for fear­less films that ask dif­fi­cult ques­tions, build bridges, seek redress and pro­mote social jus­tice and dialogue.

To see our two most recent edi­tions see: https://festival.raifilm.org.uk/

RAI FILM Fes­ti­val 2025 will cel­e­brate our 40th anniver­sary both in per­son and online:  https://raifilm.org.uk/rai-film-festival-2025/

In per­son film fes­ti­val – 27–30 March 2025 at Water­shed & Arnolfi­ni, Bris­tol UK
Screen­ings, gala events, work­shops and talks
Fes­ti­val films avail­able online through­out April 2025
Stream­ing 80 films avail­able 24/7 worldwide
RAI FILM Con­fer­ence – 28 April‑2 May 2025
Keynotes, pan­els, round­table, work­shops and paper presentations

Join us to explore the crit­i­cal role of visu­al and mul­ti­modal anthro­pol­o­gy in address­ing con­tem­po­rary glob­al issues. Sub­mit your pro­pos­als and con­tribute to a dynam­ic and inclu­sive forum for inno­v­a­tive and cre­ative schol­ar­ly exchange.

Pan­el Sub­mis­sion Guidelines:

1. Pan­el, Round­table, and Work­shop Proposals:

• Title: Con­cise and descriptive.
• Short Abstract: a (very) short abstract of less than 300 characters,
• Long Abstract: a long abstract of 250 words

2. Impor­tant Dates:

• Call for Pan­els Clos­es: 1 Octo­ber 2024
• Call for Papers Opens: 1 Novem­ber 2024
• Call for Papers Clos­es: 17 Jan­u­ary 2025
• Reg­is­tra­tion Opens: 24 Feb­ru­ary 2025

To Sub­mit: All pro­pos­als must be made via an online form https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/raiff2025/panel-form

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CfP for the pan­el “Towards Social Stud­ies of (Bio­med­ical) Testing?”
STS Con­fer­ence Graz 2025 “Crit­i­cal Issues in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Soci­ety Studies“
May 5 to 7, 2025 and on Zoom

Con­venors:
Erik Aar­den (Uni­ver­si­ty of Klagenfurt)
Mara Köh­ler (Karl Land­stein­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sciences)
Vic­to­ria Mek­lin (Uni­ver­si­ty of Klagenfurt)
Ingrid Met­zler (Karl Land­stein­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sciences)

The call for abstracts is open until Jan­u­ary 20, 2025

Towards Social Stud­ies of (Bio­med­ical) Testing?

Over the past three decades, schol­ars in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies (STS) and relat­ed fields, such as Med­ical Soci­ol­o­gy, Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy, Health Pol­i­cy Analy­sis, and Bioethics, have engaged with the phe­nom­e­non of “test­ing in bio­med­i­cine.” Much of this work has focused on spe­cif­ic types of tests or their uses in dis­tinct set­tings. For instance, begin­ning in the late 1980s, schol­ars have stud­ied genet­ic test­ing as it was envi­sioned, devel­oped, and used in clin­i­cal, pub­lic health, or recre­ation­al prac­tices, or com­pared the moral­i­ties of the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works sus­tain­ing and lim­it­ing its uses. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, schol­ars con­tribut­ing to a soci­ol­o­gy of diag­no­sis have inves­ti­gat­ed how test­ing in clin­i­cal prac­tices is involved in “mak­ing up peo­ple” (Hack­ing, 2002). More recent­ly, research has addressed the devel­op­ment, use, and reg­u­la­tions of test­ing in emerg­ing fields such as trans­la­tion­al med­i­cine and pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to the polit­i­cal economies of test­ing and the author­i­ties involved in their gov­er­nance. Last but not least, emerg­ing bod­ies of schol­ar­ship have explored the role of test­ing as a gov­ern­ing tool in glob­al health ini­tia­tives and pan­dem­ic man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in response to COVID-19.

In this pan­el, we aim to use test­ing as a bound­ary object to open up a con­ver­sa­tion between these dif­fer­ent areas of research. Build­ing on work per­formed under the label of the “anthro­pol­o­gy of med­ical test­ing” (Street and Kel­ly, 2021) and the “soci­ol­o­gy of diag­no­sis and screen­ing” (Petersen and Pien­aar, 2021), we pro­pose the label of “social stud­ies of (bio­med­ical) test­ing” or “bio­med­ical test­ing stud­ies” to encour­age inter­dis­ci­pli­nary engagements.

We invite both empir­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that engage with the envi­sion­ing, devel­op­ment, use, eval­u­a­tion, and reg­u­la­tions of test­ing across diverse bio­med­ical domains. These may include but are not lim­it­ed to: test­ing prac­tices in clin­i­cal, pub­lic health or social ser­vice set­tings; DIY-test­ing; and eco­nom­ic, legal, moral, and polit­i­cal dimen­sions of test­ing as well as the absences or non-use of tests.

Con­fer­ence Page: https://stsconf.tugraz.at/
Abstract Sub­mis­sion: https://www.conftool.com/sts-conference-graz-2025/
Call Link: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:5f98cc92-aa88-4cd7-a930-ceff51ffc631
List of Pan­els: https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/call-for-abstracts/

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CfP to the pan­el “Towards Social Stud­ies of (Bio­med­ical) Testing”
23rd Annu­al STS Con­fer­ence Graz 2025: “Crit­i­cal Issues in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Soci­ety Studies.“
May 5 to 7, 2025
Graz (Aus­tria), online hybrid

The call for abstracts is open until Jan­u­ary 20, 2025.

„Towards Social Stud­ies of (Bio­med­ical) Testing?”

Short Abstract:

This pan­el seeks to engage schol­ars in a con­ver­sa­tion on test­ing in bio­med­i­cine. We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions that explore the devel­op­ment, uses, reg­u­la­tion, and gov­er­nance of var­i­ous bio­med­ical tests across clin­i­cal, pub­lic health, and recre­ation­al contexts.

Con­fer­ence Page: https://stsconf.tugraz.at/
Abstract Sub­mis­sion: https://www.conftool.com/sts-conference-graz-2025/
Call Link: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:5f98cc92-aa88-4cd7-a930-ceff51ffc631
List of Pan­els: https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/call-for-abstracts/

Con­venors:

Erik Aar­den (Uni­ver­si­ty of Klagenfurt)
Mara Köh­ler (Karl Land­stein­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sciences)
Vic­to­ria Mek­lin (Uni­ver­si­ty of Klagenfurt)
Ingrid Met­zler (Karl Land­stein­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sciences)

Long Abstract:

Over the past three decades, schol­ars in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies (STS) and relat­ed fields, such as Med­ical Soci­ol­o­gy, Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy, Health Pol­i­cy Analy­sis, and Bioethics, have engaged with the phe­nom­e­non of “test­ing in bio­med­i­cine.” Much of this work has focused on spe­cif­ic types of tests or their uses in dis­tinct set­tings. For instance, begin­ning in the late 1980s, schol­ars have stud­ied genet­ic test­ing as it was envi­sioned, devel­oped, and used in clin­i­cal, pub­lic health, or recre­ation­al prac­tices, or com­pared the moral­i­ties of the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works sus­tain­ing and lim­it­ing its uses. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, schol­ars con­tribut­ing to a soci­ol­o­gy of diag­no­sis have inves­ti­gat­ed how test­ing in clin­i­cal prac­tices is involved in “mak­ing up peo­ple” (Hack­ing, 2002). More recent­ly, research has addressed the devel­op­ment, use, and reg­u­la­tions of test­ing in emerg­ing fields such as trans­la­tion­al med­i­cine and pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to the polit­i­cal economies of test­ing and the author­i­ties involved in their gov­er­nance. Last but not least, emerg­ing bod­ies of schol­ar­ship have explored the role of test­ing as a gov­ern­ing tool in glob­al health ini­tia­tives and pan­dem­ic man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in response to COVID-19.

In this pan­el, we aim to use test­ing as a bound­ary object to open up a con­ver­sa­tion between these dif­fer­ent areas of research. Build­ing on work per­formed under the label of the “anthro­pol­o­gy of med­ical test­ing” (Street and Kel­ly, 2021) and the “soci­ol­o­gy of diag­no­sis and screen­ing” (Petersen and Pien­aar, 2021), we pro­pose the label of “social stud­ies of (bio­med­ical) test­ing” or “bio­med­ical test­ing stud­ies” to encour­age inter­dis­ci­pli­nary engagements.

We invite both empir­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that engage with the envi­sion­ing, devel­op­ment, use, eval­u­a­tion, and reg­u­la­tions of test­ing across diverse bio­med­ical domains. These may include but are not lim­it­ed to: test­ing prac­tices in clin­i­cal, pub­lic health or social ser­vice set­tings; DIY-test­ing; and eco­nom­ic, legal, moral, and polit­i­cal dimen­sions of test­ing as well as the absences or non-use of tests.

Perma­link

CfP for a Pan­el on “Towards Social Stud­ies of (Bio­med­ical) Testing?”
23rd Annu­al STS Con­fer­ence Graz 2025, “Crit­i­cal Issues in Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Soci­ety Studies“
May 5 to 7, 2025. The call for abstracts is open until Jan­u­ary 20, 2025

Con­venors:

Erik Aar­den (Uni­ver­si­ty of Klagenfurt)
Mara Köh­ler (Karl Land­stein­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sciences)
Vic­to­ria Mek­lin (Uni­ver­si­ty of Klagenfurt)
Ingrid Met­zler (Karl Land­stein­er Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sciences)

“Towards Social Stud­ies of (Bio­med­ical) Testing?”

Over the past three decades, schol­ars in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies (STS) and relat­ed fields, such as Med­ical Soci­ol­o­gy, Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy, Health Pol­i­cy Analy­sis, and Bioethics, have engaged with the phe­nom­e­non of “test­ing in bio­med­i­cine.” Much of this work has focused on spe­cif­ic types of tests or their uses in dis­tinct set­tings. For instance, begin­ning in the late 1980s, schol­ars have stud­ied genet­ic test­ing as it was envi­sioned, devel­oped, and used in clin­i­cal, pub­lic health, or recre­ation­al prac­tices, or com­pared the moral­i­ties of the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works sus­tain­ing and lim­it­ing its uses. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, schol­ars con­tribut­ing to a soci­ol­o­gy of diag­no­sis have inves­ti­gat­ed how test­ing in clin­i­cal prac­tices is involved in “mak­ing up peo­ple” (Hack­ing, 2002). More recent­ly, research has addressed the devel­op­ment, use, and reg­u­la­tions of test­ing in emerg­ing fields such as trans­la­tion­al med­i­cine and pre­ci­sion med­i­cine, pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to the polit­i­cal economies of test­ing and the author­i­ties involved in their gov­er­nance. Last but not least, emerg­ing bod­ies of schol­ar­ship have explored the role of test­ing as a gov­ern­ing tool in glob­al health ini­tia­tives and pan­dem­ic man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in response to COVID-19.

In this pan­el, we aim to use test­ing as a bound­ary object to open up a con­ver­sa­tion between these dif­fer­ent areas of research. Build­ing on work per­formed under the label of the “anthro­pol­o­gy of med­ical test­ing” (Street and Kel­ly, 2021) and the “soci­ol­o­gy of diag­no­sis and screen­ing” (Petersen and Pien­aar, 2021), we pro­pose the label of “social stud­ies of (bio­med­ical) test­ing” or “bio­med­ical test­ing stud­ies” to encour­age inter­dis­ci­pli­nary engagements.

We invite both empir­i­cal and the­o­ret­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that engage with the envi­sion­ing, devel­op­ment, use, eval­u­a­tion, and reg­u­la­tions of test­ing across diverse bio­med­ical domains. These may include, but are not lim­it­ed to: test­ing prac­tices in clin­i­cal, pub­lic health or social ser­vice set­tings; DIY-test­ing; and eco­nom­ic, legal, moral, and polit­i­cal dimen­sions of test­ing as well as the absences or non-use of tests.

For more infor­ma­tion and to apply visit:

Con­fer­ence Page: https://stsconf.tugraz.at/
Abstract Sub­mis­sion: https://www.conftool.com/sts-conference-graz-2025/
Call Link: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:5f98cc92-aa88-4cd7-a930-ceff51ffc631

List of Pan­els: https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/call-for-abstracts/

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Freiburg­er Filmforum
27.5–1.6.2025

Dear Film Enthu­si­asts, get your cal­en­dars out and look for­ward to a fes­ti­val week filled with high-qual­i­ty films, engag­ing exchanges, and fes­ti­val atmos­phere! From May 27 to June 1, 2025, the Freiburg­er Film­fo­rum Fes­ti­val of Tran­scul­tur­al Cin­e­ma [1] will take place at the Kom­mu­nales Kino Freiburg. With numer­ous guests
and an exten­sive accom­pa­ny­ing pro­gram, we are cel­e­brat­ing a dou­ble anniver­sary: 40 years of the Film­fo­rum and the 10th anniver­sary of our Stu­dents’ Platform.

The fes­ti­val address­es both con­tem­po­rary and his­tor­i­cal, socio-polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al top­ics, aim­ing to inspire aes­thet­ic and the­o­ret­i­cal engage­ment with diver­si­ty and cul­tur­al dif­fer­ence. At the heart of the fes­ti­val are in-depth film dis­cus­sions between the audi­ence and the film­mak­ers or protagonists.

Young per­spec­tives shape the Stu­dents’ Plat­form. The over­whelm­ing response to the Call for Entries promis­es a rich pro­gram that is right on the pulse of the times. With the focus „Resound­ing Resis­tance,” the fes­ti­val will par­tic­u­lar­ly hon­or works that have emerged under the com­plex con­di­tions of threat, vio­lence, and displacement.

The Ate­liers Varan [2], co-ini­ti­at­ed by Jean Rouch in Paris, have been orga­niz­ing doc­u­men­tary film work­shops world­wide since the ear­ly 1980s. In the main pro­gram, the Film­fo­rum will present a char­ac­ter­is­tic selec­tion of films pro­duced in the „Ate­liers” ? simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in Freiburg and at the Tashkent Film School [3] in Uzbekistan.

For all ear­ly birds, there is a dis­count­ed tick­et avail­able for ?55 [4] until mid-Feb­ru­ary! You can find infor­ma­tion regard­ing accom­mo­da­tions, trav­el, and tick­ets on our web­site under „Ser­vice”. We are hap­py to assist excur­sion groups in find­ing a place to sleep (mail to students@freiburger-filmforum.de). Stay updat­ed on Insta­gram [5] and
Face­book [6].

Let’s make the cin­e­ma a vibrant place of encounter and exchange. We look for­ward to see­ing you!

[1] https://www.freiburger-filmforum.de/en/home/
[2] https://www.ateliersvaran.com/en
[3] https://www.instagram.com/tashkentfilmschool/?hl=de
[4] https://www.freiburger-filmforum.de/en/service/tickets/
[5] https://www.instagram.com/freiburgerfilmforum/
[6] https://www.facebook.com/freiburgerfilmforum

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Call for Papers for the work­shop “Queer Phar­ma: Exper­i­men­ta­tions in Bod­ies, Sub­stances, Affects”
June 4–6, 2025
Schwules Muse­um Berlin & Freie Uni­ver­sität Berlin
Co-orga­nized by Han­sjörg Dil­ger and Max Schnepf 

Queer Phar­ma: Exper­i­men­ta­tions in Bod­ies, Sub­stances, Affects

Aca­d­e­m­ic work­shop with a pub­lic keynote by Kane Race (Pro­fes­sor of Gen­der and Cul­tur­al Stud­ies, Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney) & an artis­tic ses­sion led by Tomás Espinosa

Abstract sub­mis­sion: Novem­ber 24, 2024
Noti­fi­ca­tions of accep­tance: Decem­ber 6, 2024
Pre-cir­cu­la­tion of paper drafts (3.000 words): May 4, 2025

Exper­i­men­ta­tions with phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sub­stances cra­dle queer poten­tial – bod­ies and organ­isms trans­form, rela­tions shift, emo­tions swell or fade into qui­etude. With capac­i­ties to inter­vene in life’s process­es, drugs and med­i­cines are not mere­ly prod­ucts of ‘Big Phar­ma,’ but agents of uncan­ny pos­si­bil­i­ty. How might we imag­ine minor ‘phar­mas’ in ten­sion with or on the mar­gins of the dom­i­nance, epit­o­mized by the cap­i­tal­ized ‘Big’? Tak­ing Queer Phar­ma as a coun­ter­point, this work­shop invites sub­mis­sions that ethno­graph­i­cal­ly engage with uncer­tain­ties and impro­vi­sa­tions in exper­i­ment­ing with bod­ies, sub­stances, and affects – whether through drug use or oth­er phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prac­tices (Race 2009, 2018). What new mate­r­i­al and affec­tive con­stel­la­tions might emerge if we were to focus on exper­i­men­ta­tion as a queer prac­tice? […]

You can find the full CFP attached and also HERE.

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Work­shop „The­o­riz­ing through the mun­dane: sto­ry­ing trans­for­ma­tions in healthcare”
Depart­ment of Soci­ol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich, Switzerland
04–06.06.2025
CfP Dead­line: 01.12 2024

Details:
As a ‘big sto­ry’ con­cern, trans­for­ma­tions in health­care abound: dig­i­tal­iza­tion and the intro­duc­tion of AI, major demo­graph­ic trans­for­ma­tions, antimi­cro­bial resis­tances, soar­ing health­care staff short­ages, the emer­gence of trans­gen­der care, the ‘cri­sis’ of mater­ni­ty and neona­tal care, and ever increas­ing health inequal­i­ties are just a few of them. This work­shop and spe­cial issue respond to such ‘big sto­ry’ con­cerns in health­care by the­o­riz­ing through ‘the mundane’.

STS has a long tra­di­tion – with dif­fer­ent begin­nings – of attend­ing to and the­o­riz­ing through ‘the mun­dane’. Think about for exam­ple the mun­dane­ness of infra­struc­tur­al work (Bowk­er and Star 1999), the fleet­ing­ly sub­tle ‘here-and-now’ (Ver­ran 1999), the every­day­ness of mar­gin­al­iz­ing ‘invis­i­ble work’ (Star/Strauss 1989) and Latour’s doorstop­per (Johnson/Latour 1988). More recent­ly, it has been cen­tral to ‘care stud­ies’ and ‘main­te­nance and repair stud­ies’ marked through an atten­tion to ‘dai­ly life matters’
and ‘tin­ker­ing’ (Mol et al. 2010), ‘exno­va­tion’ (Mes­man 2008), ‘every­day ethics’ (Pols 2023), the eas­i­ly deval­ued as ethico-polit­i­cal com­mit­ment (Puig de la Bel­la­casa 2011), and over­looked sit­u­a­tions that take place in inter­stices of rou­tine and break­down (Denis et al. 2015).

In this work­shop and spe­cial issue, we are draw­ing upon and extend­ing these rich STS accounts on ‘the mun­dane’ to empir­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gate, think about and exper­i­ment with how STS schol­ars can relate to and inter­vene in ‘trans­for­ma­tions’ in health­care. After, or in addi­tion to, the ana­lyt­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ties and con­cerns that have been devel­oped in the care debate (Lindén and Lydahl 2021; Mol, Moser, Pols 2021; Mar­tin, Myers, Viseu 2015; Puig de la Bel­la­casa 2011) and the field of val­u­a­tion stud­ies (Dus­sauge, Helges­son, Lee 2015), which have dom­i­nat­ed research on health­care in STS over the past decade, the spe­cial issue seeks to – empir­i­cal­ly, ana­lyt­i­cal­ly, and polit­i­cal­ly – take the next step. ‘The­o­ris­ing through the mun­dane’ offers a ver­sion of STS that stays respon­sive to the ways we are liv­ing, dying and car­ing for bod­ies and dis­eases, and their trans­for­ma­tions, in the first half of the 21st cen­tu­ry; it offers an STS that trans­forms with and through these ways now, here, and in the future.

The work­shop and spe­cial issue wel­comes papers with an empir­i­cal focus on health­care in the large sense. The con­tri­bu­tions will explore ques­tions such as:

– What counts as ‘mun­dane’ in par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tions, sites, prac­tices of healthcare?
– How does an atten­tion to ‘the mun­dane’ allow us to trans­form ‘big sto­ries’ about cur­rent trans­for­ma­tions in healthcare?
– How does ‘the mun­dane’ allow us to attend to modes of liv­ing and dying well?
– How to stay atten­tive to asym­met­ri­cal con­fig­u­ra­tions and the non-inno­cence of ‘the mundane’?
– How does the lens of the mun­dane trans­form and extend STS theorizing?

The work­shop will take place from the 4th to the 6th June 2025 at the Depart­ment of Soci­ol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich. Par­tic­i­pants need to sub­mit a paper draft before­hand, which will be dis­cussed dur­ing the work­shop. On the third day, we will engage in
alter­na­tive for­mats (walk­ing, writ­ing, etc.) to think through the mundane.

The spe­cial issue will be based on the work­shop and sub­mit­ted to a major STS jour­nal (cur­rent­ly envis­aged S&TS).

If this speaks to you and you are inter­est­ed in sub­mit­ting a con­tri­bu­tion to the work­shop and spe­cial issue or only to the spe­cial issue, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words before the 1st Decem­ber 2024 to: theorising_through_the_mundane@etik.com
If you have fur­ther ques­tions, do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us. We are look­ing for­ward to receiv­ing your contribution.

Time­line:
2024 Decem­ber 1: Open call for con­tri­bu­tions closes
2024 Decem­ber 31: Deci­sions of edi­tors on who will par­tic­i­pate in work­shop and/or SI & com­mu­ni­ca­tion of deci­sion to applicants
2025 Begin­ning May: Sub­mis­sion of paper draft for workshop
2025 June 4–6: Work­shop in Zurich (day 1 & 2 for dis­cus­sion of paper drafts, day 3 with alter­na­tive for­mats for think­ing through the mundane)
2025 Sep­tem­ber 30: Sub­mis­sion paper to a major STS jour­nal (cur­rent­ly envis­aged: S&TS)

Perma­link

CfP pan­el „At the bor­ders of bio­med­i­cine: how health and care are recon­fig­ured as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise”
10th STS Italia Con­fer­ence “Techno­science for Good: Design­ing, Car­ing, and Reconfiguring”
Politec­ni­co di Milano, Milan, Italy
11–13 June 2025

Fol­low this link: https://stsitalia.org/submission-2025/ and sub­mit a title, an abstract of up to 500 words, and key­words by 3 Feb­ru­ary 2025 (this dead­line will NOT be extended). 

At the bor­ders of bio­med­i­cine: how health and care are recon­fig­ured as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise

In con­tem­po­rary soci­eties, neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic arrange­ments and the rise of con­sumerism have sig­nif­i­cant­ly reshaped cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions and rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the body, fram­ing health as a high­ly indi­vid­u­al­ized and moral­ly charged respon­si­bil­i­ty. Indi­vid­u­als are expect­ed to seek knowl­edge, exer­cise moral judg­ment, par­tic­i­pate in health­care deci­sions, and min­i­mize health risks through per­son­al choic­es. This empha­sis on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty is reflect­ed not only in pub­lic health dis­cours­es but also in knowl­edge domains that sit at the epis­temic bound­aries of bio­med­i­cine. Con­se­quent­ly, it is impor­tant to explore how these new pub­lic health dis­cours­es have cre­at­ed space for alter­na­tive practices—such as med­i­ta­tion, nutri­tion­al ther­a­pies, dance ther­a­py, and heal­ing meth­ods drawn from natur­opa­thy and homeopathy—to enter the health­care are­na. These prac­tices are sup­port­ed by an increased empha­sis on indi­vid­ual choice, ther­a­peu­tic plu­ral­ism, and asso­ci­at­ed fund­ing packages. 

Approach­es that encom­pass health and well­ness prac­tices that lie out­side and are not accept­ed with­in bio­med­i­cine, oth­er­wise labeled as “refused knowl­edge”, do not sim­ply reflect an alleged oppo­si­tion to bio­med­ical advice stem­ming from health illit­er­a­cy or dis­trust of med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. Instead, they sig­ni­fy a demand from cit­i­zens, con­sumers, and patient advo­ca­cy groups to become more informed and account­able in their rela­tion­ship with bio­med­i­cine. This trend involves “open­ing the black box” of bio­med­i­cine, crit­i­cal­ly assess­ing its inner work­ings. Fur­ther research is need­ed to explore how alter­na­tive knowl­edge sys­tems chal­lenge bio­med­ical bound­aries and con­tribute to shap­ing con­tem­po­rary under­stand­ings of health and care. 

This pan­el aims to bring togeth­er mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary STS research to deep­en our under­stand­ing of the social and epis­temic con­di­tions under which health and care are dis­cur­sive­ly and mate­ri­al­ly enact­ed as “do-able prob­lems” at the mar­gins of bio­med­ical sci­ence. It seeks to ana­lyze the extent to which such enact­ment may reduce indi­vid­u­als’ reliance on pre­vail­ing med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers by pro­mot­ing activ­i­ties such as self-care, health enhance­ment, chron­ic dis­ease man­age­ment, and the acqui­si­tion of diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic skills, there­by increas­ing­ly shift­ing med­ical exper­tise and respon­si­bil­i­ty to the individual.

We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers to sub­mit the­o­ret­i­cal, empir­i­cal, and/or method­olog­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that explore how forms of health and care emerg­ing at the bound­aries of sci­ence reshape bio­med­ical author­i­ty while becom­ing entan­gled in con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics of life. 

We espe­cial­ly encour­age a focus on the inter­sec­tion of knowl­edge-mak­ing prac­tices and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion process­es, and how these process­es are enact­ed in rela­tion to bod­i­ly expe­ri­ences, health, and care man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to the empha­sis on per­son­al and moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for health. 

Con­trib­u­tors may focus on the fol­low­ing dimensions: 

• Ana­lyze how health and care are prac­ticed at the bound­aries of bio­med­ical sciences. 

• Exam­ine clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems, tech­ni­cal objects, ther­a­peu­tic prac­tices, care rela­tion­ships, self-exper­i­men­tal tech­niques, evi­dence pro­duc­tion, and pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies that either rein­force or chal­lenge the nar­ra­tives and nor­ma­tive stances fram­ing health as an indi­vid­u­al­ized moral respon­si­bil­i­ty and per­son­al duty. 

• Explore knowl­edge legit­imiza­tion strate­gies employed to frame health and care as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise. 

• Pro­vide method­olog­i­cal reflec­tions on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a non-nor­ma­tive, sym­met­ri­cal per­spec­tive when study­ing health and care prac­tices beyond the bio­med­ical, while also con­sid­er­ing the researcher’s posi­tion­al­i­ty in the field.

If you have any ques­tions please email to stefano.crabu@unipd.it.

Perma­link

CFP for a pan­el on „Car­ing for ‚care’: fem­i­nist STS per­spec­tives on research­ing robots and AI”
Chair: Dr. Ste­vi­en­na de Saille, Lec­tur­er in Sociology
10th STS Italia Con­fer­ence, tak­ing place in Milan
11 to 13 June

Dead­line for abstracts is 3 Feb 2025

You can find more infor­ma­tion here: https://stsitalia.org/conference-2025

Car­ing for “care”: fem­i­nist STS per­spec­tives on research­ing robots and
AI

In some lan­guages, such as Ital­ian, there is a dis­tinc­tion between
car­ing for/caring about (cura) and pro­vid­ing health or social care
(assis­ten­za). In oth­er lan­guages, par­tic­u­lar­ly Eng­lish, “care” can
become a catch-all encom­pas­ing the emo­tive, the trans­ac­tion­al and the
sys­temic. This semi­otic  slip­page, par­tic­u­lar­ly in dis­cus­sions about
emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as robots and AI, means that things which
can­not actu­al­ly care are increas­ing­ly tout­ed as the
solu­tion for “the cri­sis of care” for dis­abled and old­er peo­ple, ie.
those who advanced cap­i­tal­ist soci­eties tend to care the least about.

Begin­ning with the work of Tron­to and Bel­la­casa, this tra­di­tion­al open
pan­el asks how “care” becomes con­struct­ed, decon­struct­ed, entangled,
detan­gled, impli­cat­ed and alien­at­ed in these dis­cus­sions in different
lan­guages and dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al con­texts. It asks how those of us
doing empir­i­cal research on the use of robots and AI in care can
devel­op schol­ar­ship that uses fem­i­nist STS sen­si­bil­i­ties, paradigms
and prac­tices to inform our par­tic­i­pa­tion. How can the con­flu­ence of
the robot­ic, the human and the social be stud­ied with care, when
nei­ther the prob­lems, con­text, pur­pose nor users are well defined and
the lan­guage of “care” is not uni­ver­sal?  What oth­er forms of
knowl­edge pro­duc­tion could we uti­lize as an anti­dote to instrumental
engi­neer­ing imag­i­nar­ies, par­tic­u­lar­ly where these claim to be solving
the “prob­lem” of car­ing for soci­etal­ly vul­ner­a­ble groups? How do we as
STS schol­ars work against tech­noso­lu­tion­ism, and avoid being co-opted
into instru­men­tal imag­i­nar­ies when work­ing on interdisciplinary
projects? In oth­er words, how do we care for “care”?

This pan­el invites papers which dis­cuss these and sim­i­lar questions
about mobi­liz­ing STS sen­si­bil­i­ties to help trans­form and make visible
the care in care robot­ics, in ways which can shape
and influ­ence the tra­jec­to­ry of engi­neer­ing projects. We are
espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in qual­i­ta­tive empir­i­cal research that examines
the posi­tion­al­i­ty and reflex­iv­i­ty of STS schol­ars with regard to the
study of “robots/AI for care”, as well as those exam­in­ing the new and
exper­i­men­tal forms of nor­ma­tiv­i­ty and rela­tion­al­i­ty which are
begin­ning to arise around robots, AI and human engage­ment in this
field. Con­tri­bu­tions may include (but are not lim­it­ed to) those which
dis­cuss “care” as:

• an onto­log­i­cal object, an ontol­ogy, an object conflict;
• an epis­to­mol­o­gy;
• a verb, an action;
• an ethics, a pol­i­tics, a moral imper­a­tive, a nor­ma­tive orientation;
• a set of rela­tions, a system;
• a metaphor;
• a syn­onym for main­te­nance, respon­si­bil­i­ty, nurturance…
• or any oth­er way of approach­ing robots and AI in care as a top­ic for
  (fem­i­nist) STS.

Perma­link

Call for sub­mis­sions for the 3rd ENPA Bien­ni­al Con­fer­ence, Anthro­polo­gies and Psy­cholo­gies in Inter/Action – Engag­ing Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Perspectives
11–13 June 2025
Schloss, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mün­ster, Germany
With a junior fac­ul­ty pre-con­fer­ence on 10 June 2025 

This year’s theme explores the emerg­ing inter­sec­tions of psy­cho­log­i­cal anthro­polo­gies and anthro­po­log­i­cal psy­cholo­gies, fos­ter­ing dia­logue on the poten­tial of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tion. We seek con­tri­bu­tions from anthro­pol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, and schol­ars from relat­ed dis­ci­plines who wish to present their research, share reflec­tions, and imag­ine future col­lab­o­ra­tions at the cross­roads of these fields. 

Con­fer­ence Focus:

We aim to cat­alyze inno­va­tions in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary engage­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing: Method­olog­i­cal, the­o­ret­i­cal, and con­cep­tu­al reflec­tions / Chal­lenges to uni­ver­sal­iz­ing the­o­ries and inter­ven­tions in the face of pow­er asym­me­tries and crit­i­cal epis­te­molo­gies / Decol­o­niz­ing and diver­si­fy­ing research meth­ods, infra­struc­tures, and cur­ric­u­la / Ret­ro­spec­tive, cur­rent, and for­ward-look­ing per­spec­tives on inter­dis­ci­pli­nary work in aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic contexts. 

Through this con­fer­ence, we seek to cre­ate con­struc­tive dia­logues that pro­pose new frame­works for research, prac­tice, and appli­ca­tion in areas such as pol­i­cy-mak­ing, ther­a­py, heal­ing, edu­ca­tion, care, and resistance. 

Call for Contributions: 

We warm­ly wel­come sub­mis­sions for pan­els, papers, round­ta­bles, and labs that engage with these themes. We are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and exper­i­men­tal for­mats, includ­ing cross-media, film-based research, and pub­lic-fac­ing projects. For­mats can be either ful­ly online or ful­ly in-house but can­not com­bine both with­in the same session. 

Sub­mis­sion Dead­line: 31 Jan­u­ary 2025. 

Please send your sub­mis­sions to: submissions@enpanthro.net

For detailed guide­lines and updates, please see our detailed Call for Papers below (since the mail­ing list does not allow attach­ments). You will also find the call for papers on ENPA’s web­site soon: https://enpanthro.net/

————————–

Con­fer­ence Theme

This con­fer­ence takes the recent emer­gence of psy­cho­log­i­cal anthro­polo­gies (and also anthro­po­log­i­cal psy­cholo­gies) as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reflect on the poten­tial of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tion. It invites anthro­pol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, and schol­ars from relat­ed dis­ci­plines who are inter­est­ed or engaged in join­ing forces across dis­ci­plines to present their research and reflect on their schol­ar­ship, inter­ven­tions, and aca­d­e­m­ic land­scapes. It is the main aim of the con­fer­ence to cat­alyze or set forth ideas and imag­i­na­tions for future inter/actions between psy­cholo­gies and anthropologies.

The con­fer­ence invites research papers and con­tri­bu­tions on method­olog­i­cal, the­o­ret­i­cal, and con­cep­tu­al inno­va­tions and reflec­tions on the poten­tial of anthro­polo­gies and psy­cholo­gies that are increas­ing­ly con­cerned with pow­er asym­me­tries, crit­i­cal epis­te­molo­gies, and the effects of uni­ver­sal­iz­ing the­o­ries and inter­ven­tions. In the face of grow­ing human and non-human inter­con­nect­ed­ness, psy­cho­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy fos­ters insights into new forms of inequal­i­ty, vio­lence, and human sub­jec­tiv­i­ty. The assump­tion that psy­cho­log­i­cal and bio-psy­chi­atric insights are to be imposed on human expe­ri­ence and behav­ior is itself open to ques­tion, cre­at­ing ten­sions between uni­ver­sal­iz­ing and rel­a­tiviz­ing under­stand­ings of the human con­di­tion that col­lab­o­ra­tions between anthro­pol­o­gy and psy­chol­o­gy are unique­ly posi­tioned to address. 

In addi­tion to explor­ing cur­rent inter­dis­ci­pli­nary engage­ments, the con­fer­ence high­lights per­spec­tives on diver­si­fy­ing and decol­o­niz­ing research meth­ods, infra­struc­tures, and cur­ric­u­la. Such self-reflex­ive and col­lab­o­ra­tive lens­es seem para­mount as they chal­lenge hege­mon­ic key assump­tions on feel­ing, think­ing, inter­act­ing, or learning. 

The con­fer­ence encour­ages par­tic­i­pants to think of their con­tri­bu­tions not just, or even pri­mar­i­ly, as cri­tiques but rather as con­struc­tive attempts to define and pro­pose future trans- and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary engage­ments at the inter­sec­tions of psy­chol­o­gy and anthro­pol­o­gy and relat­ed dis­ci­plines. This con­fer­ence is inter­est­ed in ret­ro­spec­tives, cur­rent ini­tia­tives, and pro­pos­als for ways to do inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research, ana­lyze results, the­o­rize, and apply them in aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic settings. 

Through a fruit­ful dia­logue with­in and between dis­ci­plines, the 3rd ENPA 2025 Bien­ni­al aims to fos­ter new insights in research con­texts, pol­i­cy­mak­ing, ther­a­py, heal­ing, car­ing, resist­ing, or learn­ing, to men­tion but a few ini­tia­tives. It explic­it­ly invites inter­dis­ci­pli­nary dia­logues and collaborations.

Call for Pan­els, Papers, Round­ta­bles, and Labs

We warm­ly invite pan­el and paper sub­mis­sions across the field of schol­ars work­ing at the inter­sec­tions of anthro­pol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, and relat­ed dis­ci­plines. Aside from research papers, we explic­it­ly encour­age con­tri­bu­tions that work with mixed, cross/media, or film as research meth­ods or ways that com­mu­ni­cate research in aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic publics. We also encour­age round­ta­bles on con­tro­ver­sial ques­tions and debates, and we invite cre­ative labs that can be con­duct­ed both inside the venue and in the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ments of the Schloss (includ­ing the Botan­i­cal Gar­den, Schloss Park, or the city).

Pan­el and paper sub­mis­sions: We emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age pan­el sub­mis­sions but will also accept a lim­it­ed num­ber of indi­vid­ual papers, which will be arranged into cohe­sive pan­els by the ENPA con­fer­ence team. Each pan­el ses­sion includes 5 x 20-minute pre­sen­ta­tion slots and 20 min­utes for open dis­cus­sion. Pos­si­ble for­mats are: 5 papers + 20 min dis­cus­sion OR 4 papers, dis­cus­sant + 20 min discussion. 

Round­ta­bles: We invite round­ta­bles on con­tro­ver­sial ques­tions and debates com­pris­ing a max­i­mum of 7 (inter­na­tion­al) guest speak­ers and 3 moderators.

Labs: We encour­age labs in which exper­i­men­tal dis­cus­sion for­mats are to be test­ed. This includes walk-alongs, walkie-talkies, emplaced learn­ing, or artis­tic meth­ods, to men­tion but a few exam­ples, as well as projects that break new ground method­olog­i­cal­ly and ped­a­gog­i­cal­ly. A max­i­mum of 4 orga­niz­ers are encour­aged to engage in cre­ative for­mats and orga­nize the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants, aims, and modalities.

All pre­sen­ta­tion types (i.e., pan­els, papers, round­ta­bles, and labs can be orga­nized as either exclu­sive online for­mats, or as exclu­sive in-house for­mats, but for­mats can­not be merged (i.e. it is not pos­si­ble to have a mix of online and in-house pre­sen­ta­tions in one pan­el, round­table, lab).

Please sub­mit your pan­els, papers, round­ta­bles, or labs by 31 Jan­u­ary 2025 via email at submissions@enpanthro.net

Pan­el sub­mis­sions should include:

· gen­er­al abstract, max 250 words, please indi­cate if online or in-house
· abstract for each of the 4–5 papers, max 250 words each
· name, insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tion, and email of all par­tic­i­pants (chair/s, pre­sen­ters, discussants)

Indi­vid­ual paper sub­mis­sions should include:

· abstract, max 250 words, please indi­cate if online or in-house
· name, affil­i­a­tion, and email

Round­table sub­mis­sions should include:

· gen­er­al abstract, max 250 words, please indi­cate if online or in-house
· name, insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tion, and email of all par­tic­i­pants (mod­er­a­tors, guest speakers)

Lab sub­mis­sions should include: 

· gen­er­al abstract in the theme, max 250 words, please indi­cate if online or in-house
· a note on aims, modal­i­ties, media, ped­a­gogy, space, and for­mat, max 250 words
· name, insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tion, and email of all organizers

To ensure robust atten­dance across work­shops, labs, and round­ta­bles, the con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers may lim­it the total num­ber of ses­sions avail­able in these for­mats. Addi­tion­al­ly, the ‘two-role rule’ applies to roles involv­ing work­shops, labs, round­table orga­ni­za­tion, and posi­tions as pan­elists or speak­ers: each par­tic­i­pant may engage in no more than two dis­tinct roles across these cat­e­gories (e.g., workshop/lab/roundtable orga­ni­za­tion, speak­er, mod­er­a­tor, or dis­cus­sant). Dual roles with­in the same cat­e­go­ry are not per­mit­ted. Please note that when par­tic­i­pat­ing in a lab, the ‘two-role rule’ does not apply.

Reg­is­tra­tion will open in Feb­ru­ary 2025, and – as in pre­vi­ous years – we aim to keep fees as low as pos­si­ble to ensure a diverse and acces­si­ble conference.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on ENPA and the 3rd ENPA 2025 Bien­ni­al Con­fer­ence can be found on our web­site: https://enpanthro.net. If you have any fur­ther ques­tions regard­ing the con­fer­ence, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us at conference@enpanthro.net

Perma­link

CfP for the third ENPA (Euro­pean Net­work for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Anthro­pol­o­gy) Bien­ni­al Con­fer­ence titled “Anthro­polo­gies and Psy­cholo­gies in Inter/Action – Engag­ing Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Perspectives”
Dead­line Feb­ru­ary 21st

The con­fer­ence will be held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mün­ster in the west of Ger­many, as well as online
11–13 June 2025

Pre­ced­ing the main con­fer­ence, the Writ­ing (Co-)Lab: ENPA Pre-Con­fer­ence Work­shop for Grad­u­ate Stu­dents and Ear­ly Career Schol­ars will be held on 10 June 2025.

This year’s con­fer­ence aims to explore the dynam­ic inter­sec­tions between psy­cho­log­i­cal anthro­pol­o­gy and anthro­po­log­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy, fos­ter­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary dia­logue and col­lab­o­ra­tion. We invite anthro­pol­o­gists, psy­chol­o­gists, and schol­ars from relat­ed dis­ci­plines to present their research, share reflec­tions, and envi­sion future col­lab­o­ra­tions at the cross­roads of these fields. The con­fer­ence will host an array of inter­na­tion­al invit­ed speak­ers includ­ing keynotes from Prof. Byron Good (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty), Prof. Marie-Jo Delvec­chio-Good (Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty), and Prof. Charis­sa Cheah (UMBC).

We warm­ly invite pan­el and paper sub­mis­sions across the field of schol­ars work­ing at the inter­sec­tions of anthro­pol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, and relat­ed dis­ci­plines. Aside from research papers, we explic­it­ly encour­age con­tri­bu­tions that work with mixed, cross/media, or film as research meth­ods or ways that com­mu­ni­cate research in aca­d­e­m­ic and non-aca­d­e­m­ic publics.

In-per­son con­fer­ence fees include warm lunch meals, snacks, cof­fee and tea. Prices are esti­mat­ed at 90 euros for ful­ly employed, 50 euros for not ful­ly employed. Online par­tic­i­pa­tion will be around 30 Euros.

Find more info about the sub­mis­sion process: https://enpanthro.net/call-for-panels-papers-roundtables-and-labs/

Please send your sub­mis­sions to: submissions@enpanthro.net.

If you have any ques­tions regard­ing the con­fer­ence, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us at conference@enpanthro.net

Perma­link

CfP for the pan­el „At the bor­ders of bio­med­i­cine: how health and care are recon­fig­ured as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise”
10th STS Italia Con­fer­ence “Techno­science for Good: Design­ing, Car­ing, and Reconfiguring”
Politec­ni­co di Milano, Milan, Italy
11–13 June 2025

Fol­low this link: https://stsitalia.org/submission-2025/ and sub­mit a title, an abstract of up to 500 words, and key­words by 3 Feb­ru­ary 2025 (this dead­line will NOT be extended). 

Pan­el 25

At the bor­ders of bio­med­i­cine: how health and care are recon­fig­ured as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise

In con­tem­po­rary soci­eties, neolib­er­al eco­nom­ic arrange­ments and the rise of con­sumerism have sig­nif­i­cant­ly reshaped cul­tur­al expec­ta­tions and rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the body, fram­ing health as a high­ly indi­vid­u­al­ized and moral­ly charged respon­si­bil­i­ty. Indi­vid­u­als are expect­ed to seek knowl­edge, exer­cise moral judg­ment, par­tic­i­pate in health­care deci­sions, and min­i­mize health risks through per­son­al choic­es. This empha­sis on per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty is reflect­ed not only in pub­lic health dis­cours­es but also in knowl­edge domains that sit at the epis­temic bound­aries of bio­med­i­cine. Con­se­quent­ly, it is impor­tant to explore how these new pub­lic health dis­cours­es have cre­at­ed space for alter­na­tive practices—such as med­i­ta­tion, nutri­tion­al ther­a­pies, dance ther­a­py, and heal­ing meth­ods drawn from natur­opa­thy and homeopathy—to enter the health­care are­na. These prac­tices are sup­port­ed by an increased empha­sis on indi­vid­ual choice, ther­a­peu­tic plu­ral­ism, and asso­ci­at­ed fund­ing packages. 

Approach­es that encom­pass health and well­ness prac­tices that lie out­side and are not accept­ed with­in bio­med­i­cine, oth­er­wise labeled as “refused knowl­edge”, do not sim­ply reflect an alleged oppo­si­tion to bio­med­ical advice stem­ming from health illit­er­a­cy or dis­trust of med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. Instead, they sig­ni­fy a demand from cit­i­zens, con­sumers, and patient advo­ca­cy groups to become more informed and account­able in their rela­tion­ship with bio­med­i­cine. This trend involves “open­ing the black box” of bio­med­i­cine, crit­i­cal­ly assess­ing its inner work­ings. Fur­ther research is need­ed to explore how alter­na­tive knowl­edge sys­tems chal­lenge bio­med­ical bound­aries and con­tribute to shap­ing con­tem­po­rary under­stand­ings of health and care. 

This pan­el aims to bring togeth­er mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary STS research to deep­en our under­stand­ing of the social and epis­temic con­di­tions under which health and care are dis­cur­sive­ly and mate­ri­al­ly enact­ed as “do-able prob­lems” at the mar­gins of bio­med­ical sci­ence. It seeks to ana­lyze the extent to which such enact­ment may reduce indi­vid­u­als’ reliance on pre­vail­ing med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers by pro­mot­ing activ­i­ties such as self-care, health enhance­ment, chron­ic dis­ease man­age­ment, and the acqui­si­tion of diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic skills, there­by increas­ing­ly shift­ing med­ical exper­tise and respon­si­bil­i­ty to the individual.

We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers to sub­mit the­o­ret­i­cal, empir­i­cal, and/or method­olog­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions that explore how forms of health and care emerg­ing at the bound­aries of sci­ence reshape bio­med­ical author­i­ty while becom­ing entan­gled in con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics of life. 

We espe­cial­ly encour­age a focus on the inter­sec­tion of knowl­edge-mak­ing prac­tices and indi­vid­u­al­iza­tion process­es, and how these process­es are enact­ed in rela­tion to bod­i­ly expe­ri­ences, health, and care man­age­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to the empha­sis on per­son­al and moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for health. 

Con­trib­u­tors may focus on the fol­low­ing dimensions: 

• Ana­lyze how health and care are prac­ticed at the bound­aries of bio­med­ical sciences. 

• Exam­ine clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems, tech­ni­cal objects, ther­a­peu­tic prac­tices, care rela­tion­ships, self-exper­i­men­tal tech­niques, evi­dence pro­duc­tion, and pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion strate­gies that either rein­force or chal­lenge the nar­ra­tives and nor­ma­tive stances fram­ing health as an indi­vid­u­al­ized moral respon­si­bil­i­ty and per­son­al duty. 

• Explore knowl­edge legit­imiza­tion strate­gies employed to frame health and care as do-able prob­lems beyond bio­med­ical expertise. 

• Pro­vide method­olog­i­cal reflec­tions on the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a non-nor­ma­tive, sym­met­ri­cal per­spec­tive when study­ing health and care prac­tices beyond the bio­med­ical, while also con­sid­er­ing the researcher’s posi­tion­al­i­ty in the field.

If you have any ques­tions please email to stefano.crabu@unipd.it.

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CfP to the pan­el „On Tin­ker­ing with Bod­i­ly Waste and Care”
7th Nordic STS Con­fer­ence: STS in and out of the Laboratory
11–13 June 2025
Stockholm

Orga­niz­ers:
Malis­sa Kay Shaw, Uni­ver­si­ty of Health Sci­ences & Phar­ma­cy in St. Louis
Liwen Shih, Taipei Med­ical University 

Sub­mis­sion link: https://www.nordicsts.se/call-for-abstracts/

Dead­line: March 1st

Title max 150 char­ac­ters and Abstract max 250 words.

Abstract:
“Why did care become an object of con­cern and what is it about care that war­rants being stud­ied and attend­ed to in social sci­ence writ­ing. This ques­tion can­not be answered by point­ing to bare facts, but has to do with val­ues.” (Mol et al. 2010:9)

“What is hap­pen­ing when we imag­ine oth­er­wise worth­less, even dan­ger­ous, human wastes as infor­ma­tive and valu­able viral sen­tinels?” (Ander­son 2024) 

Waste is tra­di­tion­al­ly some­thing unwant­ed, or use­less, that should be discarded—intrinsically defined in rela­tion to things per­ceived as valu­able or pro­duc­tive. The­o­riza­tions of waste often draw on Dou­glas’ (1984) fram­ing of “dirt as mat­ter out of place,” a means to explore social cat­e­go­riza­tions of pol­lut­ing, taboo, and dan­ger­ous sub­stances. This is use­ful when con­sid­er­ing bod­i­ly wastes (sub­stances com­mon­ly imbued with dis­gust and repul­sion), espe­cial­ly when out­side the body where they are “out of place,” which negates their poten­tial capac­i­ties to be reimag­ined as valuable/useful.
Sim­i­lar to oth­er forms of waste, bod­i­ly wastes pose sym­bol­ic and mate­r­i­al con­se­quences, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the embod­i­ment of their social dis­gust, and their con­tain­ment or dis­pos­al. How we care for bod­i­ly waste—both sym­bol­i­cal­ly and materially—affects present and future indi­vid­u­als, net­works of human and non­hu­man actors, the envi­ron­ment, and mul­ti­species gen­er­a­tional col­lec­tives. This pan­el pro­pos­es engag­ing with the notion of care to reimag­ine bod­i­ly waste and its alter­na­tive rela­tion­al influences.
STS approach­es, inspired by Celia Roberts, Annemarie Mol, and María Puig de la Bel­la­casa, frame care as col­lec­tive, dis­trib­uted prac­tices that involve dynam­ic inter­ac­tions between humans, non­hu­man actors, and tech­nolo­gies. Care is nei­ther sta­t­ic or ten­ta­tive, but con­tin­u­al, sus­tained enact­ments that shape cur­rent and future worlds. By attend­ing to the ways care is enact­ed through embod­ied, rela­tion­al, and mate­r­i­al process­es, STS schol­ar­ship helps uncov­er the ten­sions, inequal­i­ties, and con­tin­u­al con­se­quences embed­ded in care prac­tices. Draw­ing on this, our pan­el aims to use care to medi­ate waste as an actor with­in var­i­ous con­texts and spec­u­late on its val­ue and lack there­of. Sim­i­lar to waste, what is cared for and what is not, cor­re­sponds with what is val­ued and de-val­ued, and these val­ues are passed onto and shape future humans and non-humans alike (Fre­den­gren and Åsberg 2020:57).
We invite schol­ars to use care to spec­u­late on the val­ue of bod­i­ly waste in diverse con­texts. This may entail ask­ing: what is the rela­tion­al­i­ty of bod­i­ly waste; how may new techno­sci­en­tif­ic, bioso­cial, or polit­i­cal eco­nom­ic prac­tices trans­form what waste is and can do. Our own research in the realm of repro­duc­tive health offers exam­ples. For instance, when con­sti­tut­ing the uter­ine lin­ing, men­stru­al sub­stance is use­ful, con­tribut­ing to embryo devel­op­ment. But when expelled from the body, men­stru­al flu­id is “dirty,” requir­ing dis­creet hygiene prac­tices in many cul­tures. Sym­bol­isms of men­stru­al filth shape these prac­tices and accept­able men­stru­al prod­ucts, cur­tail­ing the suit­abil­i­ty of reusable prod­ucts and cre­at­ing addi­tion­al waste that impacts the envi­ron­ment and future inter­species gen­er­a­tions. Men­stru­al “filth” sym­bol­ism lim­its techno­sci­en­tif­ic ven­tures to reframe men­stru­al flu­id as a biosen­sor— trans­form­ing “waste” into a valu­able, infor­ma­tive sub­stance. Mis­car­ried embryos and abort­ed fetus­es, once expelled from the body, are often sim­i­lar­ly cat­e­go­rized as med­ical waste with­in bio­med­ical sys­tems. Those entan­gled with this “waste,” how­ev­er, mourn an unborn child, or rec­og­nize a biosig­nif­i­cant sub­stance that imparts knowl­edge of repro­duc­tive poten­tial. In such remak­ings, what was pre­vi­ous­ly deemed “waste” can become crit­i­cal tools for advanc­ing sci­en­tif­ic inquiries in diag­nos­tic tech­niques, stem cell research, devel­op­men­tal biol­o­gy, or genet­ic stud­ies. This shift high­lights the rela­tion­al nature of val­ue, where the enact­ment of waste and non-waste is con­tin­gent on the “waste’s” con­text, capac­i­ty, and fram­ing. Con­tin­u­ing to tin­ker with bod­i­ly wastes, of which there are many, and notions of care may offer a way to re-val­ue “waste” and trans­form its engage­ment with more-than-human worlds, both present and future. 

Ref­er­ences
Ander­son, War­wick (2024) Excre­men­tal haunt­ings, or the waste of mod­ern bod­ies. Soci­ety for Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence. https://4sonline.org/news_manager.php?page=37981.
Dou­glas, Mary (1984) Puri­ty and dan­ger: An analy­sis of con­cepts of pol­lu­tion and taboo. Routledge.
Fre­den­gren, Christi­na and Åsberg, Cecil­ia (2020) Check­ing in with deep time: intra­gen­er­a­tional care in reg­is­ters of fem­i­nist posthu­man­i­ties, the case of Gärstadsverken. In Deter­ri­to­ri­al­iz­ing the future: Her­itage in, of and after the Anthro­pocene, Rod­ney Har­ri­son and Col­in Ster­ling (eds). Open Human­i­ties Press, pp 56–95.
Mol, Annemarie, Moser, Ingunn, and Pols, Jean­nette, eds (2010) Care: putting prac­tice in the­o­ry. In Care in prac­tice: On tin­ker­ing in clin­ics, homes and farms. Tran­script Pub­lish­ing, pp 7‑25.

More infor­ma­tion about the con­fer­ence can be found here.

We look for­ward to receiv­ing your sub­mis­sions. If you have any ques­tions or want to dis­cuss paper ideas or pre­sen­ta­tion for­mats, please feel free to reach out to us!

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Pan­el on “Chron­ic Care Tech­nolo­gies In and out of the Clin­ic: Ten­sions, Trans­for­ma­tions, and Transgressions”.
Nordic­STS Con­fer­ence in Stock­holm, Sweden
11–13 June 2025
Dead­line: 1 March

Details: Pan­el explores how dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies are shap­ing the organ­i­sa­tion and expe­ri­ence of chron­ic care—sometimes in expect­ed ways, but often in ways that cre­ate new ten­sions, demands, and possibilities. 

From self-track­ing wear­ables and pre­dic­tive algo­rithms to elec­tron­ic health records and deci­sion sup­port tools, dig­i­tal infra­struc­tures are increas­ing­ly woven into chron­ic care. But what does this mean for patients, care­givers, and health­care pro­fes­sion­als? How do these tech­nolo­gies man­age, stan­dard­ise, or dis­rupt chronic­i­ty? And where do nego­ti­a­tion, resis­tance, and impro­vi­sa­tion emerge?

We’re look­ing for con­tri­bu­tions that engage with these ques­tions from STS, anthro­pol­o­gy, soci­ol­o­gy, and relat­ed fields—whether through empir­i­cal stud­ies, con­cep­tu­al reflec­tions, or method­olog­i­cal per­spec­tives. Top­ics might include:

– Tem­po­ral­i­ties of chron­ic care (e.g., man­ag­ing fluc­tu­at­ing symp­toms vs. stan­dard­ised dig­i­tal timelines)
– Datafi­ca­tion of chronic­i­ty (self-track­ing, patient-report­ed out­comes, med­ical records)
– Clin­i­cal deci­sion sup­port and its role in organ­is­ing chron­ic care
– The ten­sion between unpre­dictabil­i­ty and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion in chron­ic ill­ness care
– The main­te­nance work need­ed in to keep dig­i­tal care infra­struc­tures functioning
– Access, inclu­sion, and exclu­sion in dig­i­tal­ly medi­at­ed chron­ic care

The call for abstracts is now open, and we would love to see your work in this dis­cus­sion! Abstracts can be sub­mit­ted via https://www.nordicsts.se/call-for-abstracts/ , where you can also read the full pan­el description.

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CfP for Euro­pean Con­fer­ence on Social Medicine
20th-22nd of June
Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo

Call for papers dead­line is the 7th of February

Call for papers:

Approach­es to health and health­care have long been at the heart of debates on the nature and prac­tice of flour­ish­ing soci­eties. Today, much of what has been held as wide­ly shared truth is fac­ing renewed back­lash and con­stric­tion. A con­tin­u­ing onslaught of per­ceived and expe­ri­enced crises has mar­gin­al­ized dis­cours­es of sol­i­dar­i­ty to the ben­e­fit of indi­vid­u­al­ized and nation­al­ized rhetoric on health. Schol­ars ask whether sys­tems, knowl­edge, and research put in place to secure health and well­be­ing might rather do the oppo­site. Social med­i­cine as a field in Europe has strug­gled to find sol­id ground upon which to engage these cri­tiques and go about the col­lec­tive work of build­ing health­i­er futures. Yet, in the face of fas­cist, xeno­pho­bic, and oth­er­wise exclu­sion­ary vic­to­ries across Europe and the US, social med­i­cine is as vital as ever before.
To find a path for­ward for a social med­i­cine with an eye toward health for all requires prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action that tran­scends tra­di­tion­al dis­ci­plines and approach­es. The human­i­ties and social sci­ences pro­vide frame­works for ques­tion­ing, ana­lyz­ing, and the­o­riz­ing issues affect­ing soci­eties, health, and well­be­ing today. Health pro­fes­sion­als trained in the human­i­ties and social sci­ences may have unique per­spec­tives on these ques­tions in their own fields. We seek to bring to the fore three cen­tral modes of the work of social med­i­cine – prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action – to ask how they, either inde­pen­dent­ly or in inter­play, serve the build­ing of alter­na­tive futures. By prac­tice, we mean approach­es to work­ing in health­care pro­fes­sions in ways that uphold the val­ues of equi­ty and jus­tice, as well as sit­u­at­ed, reflex­ive research engage­ments with health­care prac­tices. By the­o­ry, we mean crit­i­cal epis­te­molo­gies and social the­o­ries that con­front entrenched par­a­digms and con­struct new approach­es to health. By action, we mean engage­ment with and cri­tique of attempts – inter­ven­tions, advo­ca­cy, and sys­temic shifts – to build health­ful, nour­ish­ing futures. Cog­nizant that social med­i­cine reflects on, ana­lyzes, and requires all three, we ask how and when these modes best may be interwoven.
The ECSM will be an are­na for health pro­fes­sion­als with dual train­ing in the social sci­ences or human­i­ties whose work engages one or all of these three modes: prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action. Schol­ars across dis­ci­plines com­mit­ted to nur­tur­ing health for all are also wel­come. We seek to ground our con­fer­ence in the shared pur­pose of build­ing healthy futures and invite con­tri­bu­tions that approach prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action with curios­i­ty. In com­ing togeth­er, we hope to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty of schol­ars who strive to address the inter­con­nect­ed chal­lenges that our col­lec­tive health and health sys­tems face as well as sug­gest solu­tions and ini­tia­tives by call­ing upon meth­ods from the health pro­fes­sions, social sci­ences, and the humanities.
We invite sub­mis­sions on any top­ic at the cross-sec­tion of the health pro­fes­sions and social sci­ence and the human­i­ties, and wel­come a range of dis­ci­pli­nary approach­es, time peri­ods and geo­graph­i­cal con­texts. We par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age pro­pos­als that address aspects of the con­fer­ence theme – prac­tice, the­o­ry, and action – in the work of con­tem­po­rary social med­i­cine. Abstracts are wel­come from all fields in the health pro­fes­sions, social sci­ences, and human­i­ties, includ­ing inter- and trans-dis­ci­pli­nary projects.

Please do not hes­i­tate to reach out if you have ques­tions regard­ing the call or our con­fer­ence more generally.

Emma Lengle MD MPH
Insti­tute of Health and Soci­ety, Uni­ver­si­ty of Oslo
Depart­ment of Glob­al Health and Social Med­i­cine, Har­vard University
emmajle@uio.no / emma_lengle@hms.harvard.edu

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CfP for a con­fer­ence on „Care in and out of Africa”
Prague, June 25–28 2025
Organ­is­ers : Lys Alcay­na-Stevens, Clara Devlieger 

Inter­est­ed con­trib­u­tors should sub­mit an abstract in Eng­lish or French by 15 Decem­ber 2024 via the ECAS paper sub­mis­sion form. If you have any ques­tions, please do not hes­i­tate to get in touch with Lys (lys.alcayna-stevens@anthro.ox.ac.uk) and/or Clara (clara.devlieger@unil.ch).

Abstract: Care, both as a con­cept and a prac­tice, is deeply embed­ded in every­day life in Africa. From the inti­mate acts of care­giv­ing dur­ing preg­nan­cy and ill­ness to com­mu­nal rites sur­round­ing funer­als, and the shared expe­ri­ence of food or prayer, care man­i­fests through sen­so­ry and affec­tive engage­ments that shape fam­i­ly and com­mu­nal bonds. These prac­tices are entan­gled with­in broad­er his­to­ries of migra­tion, colo­nial­ism, and glob­al health regimes. This pan­el inter­ro­gates how these entan­gle­ments are expe­ri­enced, con­test­ed, and trans­formed in Africa and among its diasporas.

By bring­ing togeth­er schol­ars work­ing at the inter­sec­tion of care, sens­es, affect, and health, we explore ques­tions such as: How is care nego­ti­at­ed in set­tings of state neglect? What do the ten­sions between patients and prac­ti­tion­ers, and between bio­med­ical pro­to­cols and every­day care prac­tices, show about the entan­gle­ment of care with pow­er, inequal­i­ty, and gov­er­nance? How do they repro­duce inequal­i­ties or serve as sites of resis­tance against neolib­er­al­ism and biopo­lit­i­cal con­trol? Who are the new providers and recip­i­ents of care, and under what con­di­tions does care become politicised?

Chang­ing care arrange­ments high­light inter­sec­tions of polit­i­cal econ­o­my, embod­ied expe­ri­ence, and every­day prac­tice. How does care bring moral and polit­i­cal economies togeth­er? How is care felt, sensed, and enact­ed in var­i­ous con­texts, from health­care set­tings to domes­tic spaces? How does care extend beyond humans to include ani­mals, plants, ecosys­tems, and ances­tors – expand­ing the notion of what con­sti­tutes com­mu­ni­ty and kin­ship and blur­ring the bina­ry of care-giv­er and recipient?

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Call for con­tri­bu­tions to a Stream on “Tox­i­c­i­ty in Africa”
ECAS 2025 con­fer­ence Prague
June 25–28, 2025

Dead­line for paper sub­mis­sions: 15th Decem­ber 2024.

Orga­niz­ers: Wen­zel Geissler, Natal­ie Jas, Susan Levine, Ruth Prince, Nick Rahi­er, Noe­mi Tou­sig­nant, Miri­am Waltz.

Pan­el 1: Tox­ic accu­mu­la­tions: expo­sure, growth and envi­ron­ment in Africa.

This pan­el exam­ines cir­cu­la­tions, absorp­tions and accu­mu­la­tions of tox­ic sub­stances at dif­fer­ent scales, through and into bod­ies, organ­isms and mate­ri­als, ecolo­gies and land­scapes, explor­ing entan­gle­ments with extrac­tion, growth and devel­op­ment, and how forms of tox­i­c­i­ty are noticed and act­ed upon.

Orga­niz­ers: Ruth Prince and Noe­mi Tousignant

Pan­el 2. Pes­ti­cide pol­i­tics in Africa: glob­al cir­cu­la­tion, pro­duc­tion, research and reg­u­la­tion of agrochemicals.

Pes­ti­cides cir­cu­late glob­al­ly, move between sites of pro­duc­tion and use, con­nect lab­o­ra­to­ries, board­rooms and leg­is­la­tions, pen­e­trate sub­strates, bio­ta and ecolo­gies, cut across scale from atmos­pheres to cells, and, per­sist­ing in bod­ies and envi­ron­ments, they mark tem­po­ral­i­ties and cut across times. 

Orga­niz­ers: Wen­zel Geissler and Nathalie Jas

Round­table Dis­cus­sion: Pes­ti­cide pol­i­tics in Africa: agro­chem­i­cal inten­si­fi­ca­tion, agro­chem­i­cal harm, and the search for alter­na­tive forms of growth.

In this round­table experts and activists from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines will dis­cuss recent inten­si­fi­ca­tions of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, rang­ing from indus­tri­alised plan­ta­tions to small-scale farm­ing – dri­ven by indus­try pres­sure and (some) donor poli­cies, fuelled by grow­ing agro­chem­i­cal input and chang­ing land-use, linked by new finan­cial and prop­er­ty regimes – as well as reflect on the search for alter­na­tive forms of sus­tain­able food production.

Link: https://www.ecasconference.org/2025/call-for-papers/ (the pan­els are under “Anthro­pol­o­gy”

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CfP „Ethno­gra­phies of expert knowl­edges in men­tal health, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and disability”
10th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Ethnog­ra­phy and Qual­i­ta­tive Research Tren­to, Italy
July 10 to 12, 2025

Dead­line: 20 January

„Ethno­gra­phies of expert knowl­edges in men­tal health, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and disability”

Nowa­days, there has been a «dis­cur­sive explo­sion» sur­round­ing men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence result­ing in a wide array of het­ero­ge­neous nar­ra­tives and rep­re­sen­ta­tions in pub­lic and aca­d­e­m­ic debates. Par­tic­u­lar­ly on dig­i­tal plat­forms, we wit­ness a rise in con­tent focused on «pos­i­tiv­i­ty» and the rever­sal of stig­ma. These can cer­tain­ly be seen as an incur­sion into the polit­i­cal sphere by mad/crip activism; how­ev­er, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize how (part of) these dis­cours­es could be absorbed into a neolib­er­al frame­work. In a con­text of per­for­ma­tive and extrac­tivist log­ic, mad/crip/neurodivergent pos­i­tiv­i­ty risks becom­ing yet anoth­er tool that decrees the «sal­va­tion» of those with the resources to fit into the frame­work of «diver­si­ty» val­ori­sa­tion, while lead­ing to process­es of «mon­stri­fi­ca­tion» towards those who devi­ate from this con­struc­tion of subjectivity.

Cen­tral in oper­at­ing this dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is the role of expert knowl­edge. Although men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence remain still framed with­in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly bio­med­ical par­a­digm, a range of tech­ni­cal fig­ures are inter­ven­ing in the con­struc­tion of cat­e­gories and the «take charge of users». An arch­i­pel­ago of expert knowl­edges – social work­ers, legal actors, tutors, edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices, (for­mer) patients who take on roles as «expert users», NGO vol­un­teers – thus inter­vene in iden­ti­ty and rela­tion­al con­struc­tions, defin­ing life tra­jec­to­ries, pro­duc­ing spaces and ser­vices that inher­ent­ly nav­i­gate the con­sti­tu­tive ambi­gu­i­ty between care and con­trol, treat­ment and neglect. Among these are the social sci­ences, both in their pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge and in pro­vid­ing tools for social care prac­tices. They con­tribute to defin­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing, clas­si­fy­ing, and quan­ti­fy­ing the users, posi­tion­ing them with­in the grids of «deserving/appropriate» vs «irrecov­er­able» patient, «reha­bil­itable» vs excluded.

The cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, result­ing from the dis­man­tling of nation­al social pro­tec­tion sys­tems in the wake of aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies and the shift of respon­si­bil­i­ty to the pri­vate sec­tor, rep­re­sents only the lat­est phase in a long-stand­ing process of dif­fer­en­tial inclu­sion and exclu­sion, deeply embed­ded in the very struc­ture of social wel­fare and the State itself.

Ethno­graph­ic prac­tice high­lights pow­er struc­tures, fos­ter­ing crit­i­cal reflec­tion on the role of social work and expert knowl­edges. This approach chal­lenges estab­lished insti­tu­tions and mod­els while also sit­u­at­ing the process­es sur­round­ing care and treat­ment with­in rela­tion­ships, con­texts, and every­day tactics.

We invite con­tri­bu­tions that address men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence, with­in and beyond the care/control bina­ry. We ask what is the role of «expert knowl­edges» – con­sid­ered in their sin­gu­lar­i­ty or inter­sec­tions – in the con­struc­tion of sub­jec­tiv­i­ties, in the pro­duc­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and in the process­es of dis­tinc­tion and frag­men­ta­tion of the user base; and how prac­tices of sub­trac­tion or resis­tance to such devices configure.

Open ques­tions

– What process­es shape the con­struc­tion of mean­ing around the cat­e­gories of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and fragili­ty (across dis­abil­i­ty, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and men­tal health), and how do these cat­e­gories influ­ence social work in tak­ing charge and man­ag­ing users?
– How can an ethno­graph­ic cri­tique of con­cepts such as pater­nal­ism and pietism in social wel­fare be framed, start­ing from prac­tices of care, con­trol, neglect, and treatment?
– How do prac­tices of dis­tinc­tion with­in social ser­vices (broad­ly defined) emerge between the «deserv­ing» user and the «prob­lem­at­ic» user, and how do these distinctions—simultaneously prac­ti­cal, orga­ni­za­tion­al, and moral—affect the bal­ance between care and control?
– How does the rela­tion­ship between fam­i­lies, pub­lic ser­vices, and care­givers con­fig­ure the every­day dynam­ics of care and con­trol with­in a con­text of poly-cri­sis and dis­man­tling the wel­fare state? How do the «third sec­tor», human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions, and vol­un­teer­ing intersect
in this relationship?
– How do mad/crip/neurodivergent sub­jec­ti­va­tion process­es unfold, both with­in and beyond med­ical­iza­tion and the fram­ing of ser­vice users?
– What impact do social inequalities—based on struc­tur­al axes of class, race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ties, and others—have on the ratio­nale of social ser­vices? How do these process­es influ­ence street-lev­el bureau­cra­cy prac­tices, and how do they shape sub­jec­ti­va­tion with­in these systems?
– What forms of with­draw­al and detach­ment from the con­trol­ling dimen­sions of social and clin­i­cal work exist, and what pos­si­bil­i­ties do they open up?
– What are the process­es of spa­tial­iza­tion of disability/neurodivergence/mental health, and how do they relate to social and clin­i­cal work? What are the geo­gra­phies of these process­es, and what do they add to our understanding?

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Call for papers for „Ethno­gra­phies of expert knowl­edges in men­tal health, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and disability”
10th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Ethnog­ra­phy and Qual­i­ta­tive Research
July 10 to 12, 2025 

Dead­line Jan­u­ary 25th 

33. Ethno­gra­phies of expert knowl­edges in men­tal health, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and disability.

Nowa­days, there has been a «dis­cur­sive explo­sion» sur­round­ing men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence result­ing in a wide array of het­ero­ge­neous nar­ra­tives and rep­re­sen­ta­tions in pub­lic and aca­d­e­m­ic debates. Par­tic­u­lar­ly on dig­i­tal plat­forms, we wit­ness a rise in con­tent focused on «pos­i­tiv­i­ty» and the rever­sal of stig­ma. These can cer­tain­ly be seen as an incur­sion into the polit­i­cal sphere by mad/crip activism; how­ev­er, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize how (part of) these dis­cours­es could be absorbed into a neolib­er­al frame­work. In a con­text of per­for­ma­tive and extrac­tivist log­ic, mad/crip/neurodivergent pos­i­tiv­i­ty risks becom­ing yet anoth­er tool that decrees the «sal­va­tion» of those with the resources to fit into the frame­work of «diver­si­ty» val­ori­sa­tion, while lead­ing to process­es of «mon­stri­fi­ca­tion» towards those who devi­ate from this con­struc­tion of subjectivity.

Cen­tral in oper­at­ing this dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion is the role of expert knowl­edge. Although men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence remain still framed with­in a pre­dom­i­nant­ly bio­med­ical par­a­digm, a range of tech­ni­cal fig­ures are inter­ven­ing in the con­struc­tion of cat­e­gories and the «take charge of users». An arch­i­pel­ago of expert knowl­edges – social work­ers, legal actors, tutors, edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices, (for­mer) patients who take on roles as «expert users», NGO vol­un­teers – thus inter­vene in iden­ti­ty and rela­tion­al con­struc­tions, defin­ing life tra­jec­to­ries, pro­duc­ing spaces and ser­vices that inher­ent­ly nav­i­gate the con­sti­tu­tive ambi­gu­i­ty between care and con­trol, treat­ment and neglect. Among these are the social sci­ences, both in their pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge and in pro­vid­ing tools for social care prac­tices. They con­tribute to defin­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing, clas­si­fy­ing, and quan­ti­fy­ing the users, posi­tion­ing them with­in the grids of «deserving/appropriate» vs «irrecov­er­able» patient, «reha­bil­itable» vs excluded.

The cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion, result­ing from the dis­man­tling of nation­al social pro­tec­tion sys­tems in the wake of aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies and the shift of respon­si­bil­i­ty to the pri­vate sec­tor, rep­re­sents only the lat­est phase in a long-stand­ing process of dif­fer­en­tial inclu­sion and exclu­sion, deeply embed­ded in the very struc­ture of social wel­fare and the State itself.

Ethno­graph­ic prac­tice high­lights pow­er struc­tures, fos­ter­ing crit­i­cal reflec­tion on the role of social work and expert knowl­edges. This approach chal­lenges estab­lished insti­tu­tions and mod­els while also sit­u­at­ing the process­es sur­round­ing care and treat­ment with­in rela­tion­ships, con­texts, and every­day tactics.

We invite con­tri­bu­tions that address men­tal health, dis­abil­i­ty, and neu­ro­di­ver­gence, with­in and beyond the care/control bina­ry. We ask what is the role of «expert knowl­edges» – con­sid­ered in their sin­gu­lar­i­ty or inter­sec­tions – in the con­struc­tion of sub­jec­tiv­i­ties, in the pro­duc­tion of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and in the process­es of dis­tinc­tion and frag­men­ta­tion of the user base; and how prac­tices of sub­trac­tion or resis­tance to such devices configure.

Open ques­tions

What process­es shape the con­struc­tion of mean­ing around the cat­e­gories of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and fragili­ty (across dis­abil­i­ty, neu­ro­di­ver­gence, and men­tal health), and how do these cat­e­gories influ­ence social work in tak­ing charge and man­ag­ing users?
How can an ethno­graph­ic cri­tique of con­cepts such as pater­nal­ism and pietism in social wel­fare be framed, start­ing from prac­tices of care, con­trol, neglect, and treatment?
How do prac­tices of dis­tinc­tion with­in social ser­vices (broad­ly defined) emerge between the «deserv­ing» user and the «prob­lem­at­ic» user, and how do these distinctions—simultaneously prac­ti­cal, orga­ni­za­tion­al, and moral—affect the bal­ance between care and control?
How does the rela­tion­ship between fam­i­lies, pub­lic ser­vices, and care­givers con­fig­ure the every­day dynam­ics of care and con­trol with­in a con­text of poly-cri­sis and dis­man­tling the wel­fare state? How do the «third sec­tor», human­i­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions, and vol­un­teer­ing inter­sect in this relationship?
How do mad/crip/neurodivergent sub­jec­ti­va­tion process­es unfold, both with­in and beyond med­ical­iza­tion and the fram­ing of ser­vice users?
What impact do social inequalities—based on struc­tur­al axes of class, race, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ties, and others—have on the ratio­nale of social ser­vices? How do these process­es influ­ence street-lev­el bureau­cra­cy prac­tices, and how do they shape sub­jec­ti­va­tion with­in these systems?
What forms of with­draw­al and detach­ment from the con­trol­ling dimen­sions of social and clin­i­cal work exist, and what pos­si­bil­i­ties do they open up?
What are the process­es of spa­tial­iza­tion of disability/neurodivergence/mental health, and how do they relate to social and clin­i­cal work? What are the geo­gra­phies of these process­es, and what do they add to our understanding?

For any issues, don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact the con­venors at fabio.bertoni@ics.ulisboa.pt and luca.sterchele@unito.it.

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in-per­son pan­el P100 – Towards new alter­na­tives in social care: Tran­si­tions in the domes­tic, insti­tu­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty care scenarios
9th APA (Asso­ci­ação Por­tugue­sa de Antropologia)
Caste­lo (Por­tu­gal)
14 to 18 July 2025

Abstracts are due by Jan­u­ary 13, 2025

https://apa2025.eventqualia.net/pt/inicio/painéis/chamada-comunicações/

We invite sub­mis­sions of papers in both Span­ish and Eng­lish that pro­vide new insights on this topic.

Abstract:
Care prac­tices have sig­nif­i­cant rela­tions to people’s exis­tence and social repro­duc­tion. Care­giv­ing involves a com­plex inter­ac­tion between stake­hold­ers in var­i­ous sce­nar­ios (domes­tic, insti­tu­tion­al, and com­mu­ni­ty-based). Indeed, care is pro­vid­ed through a chang­ing con­stel­la­tion of resources across fam­i­lies, the State, the mar­ket and civ­il soci­ety, all of which com­prise the insti­tu­tion­al struc­ture of social care. Sim­i­lar­ly, care is struc­tured not only by gen­der but also by age, class, and ethnic/national ori­gin. The tra­di­tion­al care options have been between domes­tic care and res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties. Insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion in a res­i­den­tial care home is an option that is usu­al­ly reserved for wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tions of depen­dence. Age­ing in one’s own home is an aspi­ra­tion, but this often takes place in hous­ing and neigh­bor­hoods that are not adapt­ed to the needs of the age­ing, accel­er­at­ing their vul­ner­a­ble process­es. In addi­tion, ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­par­i­ties (urban-rur­al areas) also account for inequal­i­ties in the access of care.
Our pan­el is ori­ent­ed towards iden­ti­fy­ing the ele­ments that can give rise to alter­na­tive for­mu­las for social care, which make it pos­si­ble to shift the cen­tral role played by fam­i­lies and women, favor­ing the dig­ni­fi­ca­tion of paid and unpaid care. To under­stand the expe­ri­ences in new care envi­ron­ments that try to fos­ter new forms of artic­u­la­tion between social agents and their care sur­round­ings (cohous­ing, care ecosys­tems, com­mu­ni­ties, etc.). We are inter­est­ed in con­tri­bu­tions that, based on ethno­graph­ic work and the­o­ret­i­cal reflec­tion, ana­lyze inno­v­a­tive for­mu­las in the artic­u­la­tion of long-term care providers, iden­ti­fy­ing their scope and lim­i­ta­tions when sub­vert­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al, social and gen­der inequalities.

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CfP for pan­el on the top­ic „Towards new alter­na­tives in social care: Tran­si­tions in the domes­tic, insti­tu­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty care scenarios”
9th APA – Asso­ci­ação Por­tugue­sa de Antropologia
Viana do Caste­lo (Por­tu­gal)
14–18 July, 2025

Dead­line 13 Jan­u­ary 2025: https://apa2025.eventqualia.net/pt/inicio/painéis/chamada-comunicações/
We invite sub­mis­sions of papers in both Span­ish and Eng­lish that pro­vide new insights on this topic.

Abstract:
Care prac­tices have sig­nif­i­cant rela­tions to people’s exis­tence and social repro­duc­tion. Care­giv­ing involves a com­plex inter­ac­tion between stake­hold­ers in var­i­ous sce­nar­ios (domes­tic, insti­tu­tion­al, and com­mu­ni­ty-based). Indeed, care is pro­vid­ed through a chang­ing con­stel­la­tion of resources across fam­i­lies, the State, the mar­ket and civ­il soci­ety, all of which com­prise the insti­tu­tion­al struc­ture of social care. Sim­i­lar­ly, care is struc­tured not only by gen­der but also by age, class, and ethnic/national ori­gin. The tra­di­tion­al care options have been between domes­tic care and res­i­den­tial facil­i­ties. Insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion in a res­i­den­tial care home is an option that is usu­al­ly reserved for wors­en­ing sit­u­a­tions of depen­dence. Age­ing in one’s own home is an aspi­ra­tion, but this often takes place in hous­ing and neigh­bor­hoods that are not adapt­ed to the needs of the age­ing, accel­er­at­ing their vul­ner­a­ble process­es. In addi­tion, ter­ri­to­r­i­al dis­par­i­ties (urban-rur­al areas) also account for inequal­i­ties in the access of care.
Our pan­el is ori­ent­ed towards iden­ti­fy­ing the ele­ments that can give rise to alter­na­tive for­mu­las for social care, which make it pos­si­ble to shift the cen­tral role played by fam­i­lies and women, favor­ing the dig­ni­fi­ca­tion of paid and unpaid care. To under­stand the expe­ri­ences in new care envi­ron­ments that try to fos­ter new forms of artic­u­la­tion between social agents and their care sur­round­ings (cohous­ing, care ecosys­tems, com­mu­ni­ties, etc.). We are inter­est­ed in con­tri­bu­tions that, based on ethno­graph­ic work and the­o­ret­i­cal reflec­tion, ana­lyze inno­v­a­tive for­mu­las in the artic­u­la­tion of long-term care providers, iden­ti­fy­ing their scope and lim­i­ta­tions when sub­vert­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al, social and gen­der inequalities.

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CfP for the spe­cial issue „Sociotech­ni­cal imag­i­nar­ies and prac­tices of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence in health­care: rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing care or ampli­fy­ing new risks?” in the Health Risk and Soci­ety, co-edit­ed by Veron­i­ca Moret­ti and Francesco Miele.

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions that crit­i­cal­ly explore the dual nature of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI): as a tool for inno­va­tion and as a sys­tem deeply embed­ded with­in com­plex social, tech­ni­cal, and eth­i­cal infra­struc­tures. This spe­cial issue aims to bal­ance the promise of AI with a crit­i­cal exam­i­na­tion of its risks, lim­i­ta­tions, and poten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in health­care contexts.

The full call for abstracts is attached. To par­tic­i­pate, please sub­mit a 500–800 word abstract by Feb­ru­ary 3, 2025. Authors of select­ed abstracts will be invit­ed to sub­mit full papers by July 21, 2025.

For any ques­tions or inquiries, feel free to con­tact me at our insti­tu­tion­al email: francesco.miele@dispes.units.it and veronica.moretti4@unibo.it

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„Ethnog­ra­phy for Health­care Improve­ment Sum­mer School”
23rd-25th July, 2025
Leices­ter Tigers Rug­by Club Events Cen­tre in Leices­ter, UK. 

This course is deliv­ered by expert ethno­graph­ic researchers and prac­ti­tion­ers from the Social Sci­ence, Applied Health­care & Improve­ment Research (SAPPHIRE) Group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leicester.

This short course is designed for expe­ri­enced researchers, method­ol­o­gy edu­ca­tors, 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 both days, is £1000. Trans­port to and from the venue and accom­mo­da­tion at is not included.
Reg­is­tra­tions are strict­ly lim­it­ed, and are now open at https://shop.le.ac.uk/product-catalogue/events-at-leicester/health-sciences/ethnography-for-health-care-improvement-summer-school-2025; book­ings will close 20 June 2025. 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, AFHEA)
Lec­tur­er, Depart­ment of Health Sci­ences (SAPPHIRE Group)
Col­lege of Life Sciences
Uni­ver­si­ty of Leicester

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DDD17: „POLITICS OF DEATH”
27–30 August 2025
Uni­ver­si­ty of Utrecht (Nether­lands)

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PANELS

The Death, Dying and Dis­pos­al (DDD) Con­fer­ence is the bi-annu­al con­fer­ence of the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Death and Soci­ety (ASDS). The next edi­tion will be host­ed at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utrecht (Nether­lands) and online from Wednes­day 27 to Sat­ur­day 30 August 2025. For the upcom­ing DDD17 con­fer­ence, we invite ses­sions that explore the broad top­ic of the Pol­i­tics of Death. 

Despite appear­ing as a uni­ver­sal bio­log­i­cal event, death is and has nev­er been neu­tral. Instead, it is deeply entwined with issues of (in)equality, access, and pow­er dynam­ics. In today’s world, death is per­haps more politi­cized as it ever was before. Wars, envi­ron­men­tal crises, glob­al migra­tion pat­terns, and fail­ing states bring death close to our homes. At the same time, tech­no­log­i­cal, dig­i­tal, and med­ical advance­ments alter our approach­es to deal­ing with, think­ing about, research­ing, and work­ing with death. Such devel­op­ments are equal­ly inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal, both in their ori­gins and their applications.

As prac­ti­tion­ers and schol­ars, how do we nav­i­gate the polit­i­cal dimen­sions of death? How does the polit­i­cal shape our engage­ment with death? And how can we reflect on and poten­tial­ly change our own posi­tions with­in this polit­i­cal landscape?

For more infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence theme, please refer to our web­site: https://ddd17.sites.uu.nl/conference-theme/

We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers to sub­mit a pro­pos­al for papers, orga­nized pan­els, round­ta­bles, work­shops, or oth­er for­mats by Sat­ur­day 30 Novem­ber 2024. No excep­tions to this dead­line are possible. 

We encour­age pro­pos­als in four types of ses­sion formats:

Organ­ised pan­els and indi­vid­ual papers

Pan­els will be struc­tured in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner of indi­vid­ual paper pre­sen­ta­tions. This will be four (4) pre­sen­ta­tions of 15 min­utes back-to-back, fol­lowed by a 30-minute dis­cus­sion on the pre­sen­ta­tions. All organ­ised pan­els are thus 90 min­utes. The pan­els will be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) for­mat, mean­ing paper pre­sen­ters can present from home. Dis­cus­sions will be orga­nized using chat-moderators.

Round­ta­bles

Round­ta­bles of 90 min­utes in which no more than five peo­ple dis­cuss a par­tic­u­lar theme or issue in front of (and sub­se­quent­ly with) an audi­ence. While a round­table may include short (approx. 5 min) contributions/presentations, the main idea is to cre­ate a live­ly debate, and not to focus on any one or mul­ti­ple presenter(s). To be able to cre­ate such debate, round­ta­bles will not be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) format.

Work­shops

Work­shops of 90 min­utes are char­ac­terised by exper­i­men­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, inter­ac­tion and/or impro­vi­sa­tion. The aim of work­shops is to organ­ise col­lec­tive activ­i­ties that are open-end­ed and cul­ti­vate pos­si­bil­i­ties for sur­prise, nov­el­ty, and learn­ing. Work­shops will be designed as inter­ac­tive, reflex­ive ses­sions that pri­ori­tise explo­ration, rather than the dis­cus­sion of already estab­lished research results. To make true col­lab­o­ra­tion pos­si­ble and cre­ate safe space, the max­i­mum num­ber of per­sons per work­shop is 16 (includ­ing work­shop con­venors). The work­shops will not be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) format.

Oth­er

We wel­come you to share your ideas of oth­er pos­si­ble for­mats with us. If you would like to sug­gest a dif­fer­ent for­mat and/or are will­ing to run a ses­sion or activ­i­ty with a dif­fer­ent for­mat, please let us know by send­ing an email to DDD17@uu.nl. The DDD17 selec­tion com­mit­tee will then decide if and how to accom­mo­date your idea(s).

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17th bian­nu­al DDD con­fer­ence „The Pol­i­tics of Death”
The Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Death and Soci­ety (ASDS)
Uni­ver­si­ty of Utrecht
27–30 August 2025

Details:

Despite appear­ing as a uni­ver­sal bio­log­i­cal event, death is and has nev­er been neu­tral. Instead, it is deeply entwined with issues of (in)equality, access, and pow­er dynam­ics. In today’s world, death is per­haps more politi­cized as it ever was before. Wars, envi­ron­men­tal crises, glob­al migra­tion pat­terns, and fail­ing states bring death close to our homes. At the same time, tech­no­log­i­cal, dig­i­tal, and med­ical advance­ments alter our approach­es to deal­ing with, think­ing about, research­ing, and work­ing with death. Such devel­op­ments are equal­ly inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal, both in their ori­gins and their applications.

As prac­ti­tion­ers and schol­ars, how do we nav­i­gate the polit­i­cal dimen­sions of death? How does the polit­i­cal shape our engage­ment with death? And how can we reflect on and poten­tial­ly change our own posi­tions with­in this polit­i­cal landscape?

Pol­i­tics is every­where; every­thing is polit­i­cal. It’s woven into every facet of life, shap­ing how we live, die, and make sense of the worlds in between and beyond. It is the lens through which we address our biggest chal­lenges and seize new oppor­tu­ni­ties. It shapes our sense of right and wrong, fram­ing what we see as moral or immoral. It guides deci­sions, both con­scious­ly and uncon­scious­ly, in every set­ting – from the halls of gov­ern­ment to the inti­mate spaces of home. It spans for­mal author­i­ty and hid­den social pow­er, thread­ing through the spaces we inhab­it, the rules we fol­low, and the sym­bols we embrace. It exists between peo­ple, envi­ron­ments and species, influ­enc­ing every­thing from small exchanges to glob­al reg­u­la­tions. In every inter­ac­tion and insti­tu­tion, there’s an ele­ment of pol­i­tics. Because of this, pol­i­tics is every­where, and every­thing down to the small­est detail is inher­ent­ly political.

For more infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence theme, please refer to our web­site: https://ddd17.sites.uu.nl/conference-theme/

We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers to sub­mit a pro­pos­al for papers, orga­nized pan­els, round­ta­bles, work­shops, or oth­er for­mats by Sat­ur­day 30 Novem­ber 2024. No excep­tions to this dead­line are possible.

We encour­age pro­pos­als in four types of ses­sion formats:

Organ­ised pan­els and indi­vid­ual papers

Pan­els will be struc­tured in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner of indi­vid­ual paper pre­sen­ta­tions. This will be four (4) pre­sen­ta­tions of 15 min­utes back-to-back, fol­lowed by a 30-minute dis­cus­sion on the pre­sen­ta­tions. All organ­ised pan­els are thus 90 min­utes. The pan­els will be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) for­mat, mean­ing paper pre­sen­ters can present from home. Dis­cus­sions will be orga­nized using chat-moderators.

Round­ta­bles

Round­ta­bles of 90 min­utes in which no more than five peo­ple dis­cuss a par­tic­u­lar theme or issue in front of (and sub­se­quent­ly with) an audi­ence. While a round­table may include short (approx. 5 min) contributions/presentations, the main idea is to cre­ate a live­ly debate, and not to focus on any one or mul­ti­ple presenter(s). To be able to cre­ate such debate, round­ta­bles will not be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) format.

Work­shops

Work­shops of 90 min­utes are char­ac­terised by exper­i­men­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, inter­ac­tion and/or impro­vi­sa­tion. The aim of work­shops is to organ­ise col­lec­tive activ­i­ties that are open-end­ed and cul­ti­vate pos­si­bil­i­ties for sur­prise, nov­el­ty, and learn­ing. Work­shops will be designed as inter­ac­tive, reflex­ive ses­sions that pri­ori­tise explo­ration, rather than the dis­cus­sion of already estab­lished research results. To make true col­lab­o­ra­tion pos­si­ble and cre­ate safe space, the max­i­mum num­ber of per­sons per work­shop is 16 (includ­ing work­shop con­venors). The work­shops will not be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) format.

Oth­er

We wel­come you to share your ideas of oth­er pos­si­ble for­mats with us. If you would like to sug­gest a dif­fer­ent for­mat and/or are will­ing to run a ses­sion or activ­i­ty with a dif­fer­ent for­mat, please let us know by send­ing an email to DDD17@uu.nl. The DDD17 selec­tion com­mit­tee will then decide if and how to accom­mo­date your idea(s).

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CfP for the pan­el at the next con­fer­ence of the Soci­ety for Social Stud­ies of Sci­ence 2025
Seattle
3–7 September

‘Tem­po­ral­i­ties of bod­ies, tech­nolo­gies and their entan­gle­ments in the expe­ri­ence of dis­abil­i­ty and/or chron­ic illness’.

Chron­ic ill­ness and dis­abil­i­ty have become a priv­i­leged place for tech­no­log­i­cal inter­ven­tion. Both are char­ac­ter­ized by the deploy­ment of tech­no­log­i­cal devices that aim to mit­i­gate, com­pen­sate for, or even pre­vent and slow down the loss of capac­i­ties, as well as alle­vi­ate or lim­it symp­toms. In this con­text, a var­ied array of tech­nolo­gies that dif­fer­ent­ly act on or inter­vene in bod­ies and places are intro­duced in people’s lives: tech­no­log­i­cal devices that are implant­ed in the body (e.g. insulin pumps and deep brain stim­u­la­tion), tech­no­log­i­cal devices that are attached to the body (pros­the­ses and orthoses) and/or tech­no­log­i­cal devices that are con­nect­ed both to the body and to a par­tic­u­lar place (tele­care and dial­y­sis equip­ment; exoskeletons). 

Regard­ing this ‘tech­no­log­i­cal care’ (Lancelot & Guchet, 2023), research in STS and empir­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of tech­nol­o­gy has main­ly focused on tech­no­log­i­cal use and appro­pri­a­tion, includ­ing the dif­fi­cul­ties there­of. How­ev­er vital and essen­tial these tech­nolo­gies may be in sus­tain­ing peo­ple in dai­ly life, atten­tion has scarce­ly been paid to their fragili­ty and people’s result­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty when they mal­func­tion, wear and tear, break and/or thus can no longer be used or have to be adjust­ed and/or used dif­fer­ent­ly (Oud­shoorn, 2020). 

These mate­r­i­al and exis­ten­tial dis­rup­tions and con­straints call for inquir­ing about the entan­gle­ments of dif­fer­ent tem­po­ral­i­ties of chron­ic liv­ing and dis­abil­i­ty: of bod­ies adjust­ing to chron­ic ill­ness, dis­abil­i­ty and/or to tech­no­log­i­cal care; of the tech­nolo­gies them­selves (from their devel­op­ment to their every­day use, adap­ta­tion, mal­func­tions and main­te­nance) and the socio-mate­r­i­al infra­struc­tures that sup­port them; and of the rela­tions between them. We invite con­tri­bu­tions that address, empir­i­cal­ly and/or con­cep­tu­al­ly, tech­no­log­i­cal care and its temporalities.

Dead­line of the call for abstracts:

- Jan­u­ary 31, 2025
– Noti­fi­ca­tion of acceptance:
– March 15, 2025
– 4S 2025 in-per­son conference:
– Sep­tem­ber 3–7, 2025

Abstracts (250 words max) should be sub­mit­ted on the 4S web­site: https://bit.ly/3BtgXPh

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CfP for a pan­el on “Data, Care and Learn­ing in Datafied Worlds”
4S con­fer­ence in Seat­tle and online
3–7 Sep­tem­ber 2025

The extend­ed dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sions is 2 Feb­ru­ary 2025. Please see below for more infor­ma­tion and get in touch with any ques­tions. Abstracts can be sub­mit­ted here.

Short Abstract:

How do data, care, and learn­ing shape each oth­er? Bring­ing togeth­er empir­i­cal work and the­o­ret­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions across dis­ci­plines and con­texts, this pan­el aims to think broad­ly about the prac­tices that make up the dynam­ic data-care-learn­ing nexus and the impor­tant ques­tions they raise for STS. 

Long Abstract:

In an era of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, how do data, care and learn­ing prac­tices mutu­al­ly define each other? 

As social­ly-sit­u­at­ed and the­o­ry-laden phe­nom­e­na, data prac­tices are sub­ject to oper­a­tions of scal­ing and manip­u­la­tion, under­pinned by sys­tems of log­ic and val­ue, and co-pro­duced with cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and socioe­co­nom­ic real­i­ties. Data are a prin­ci­pal medi­um through which we come to learn, care, and know about our worlds. 

Fem­i­nist STS has estab­lished the crit­i­cal impor­tance of care for sus­tain­ing our worlds, direct­ing atten­tion toward who cares, about what, and how. Con­tin­u­ing to crit­i­cal­ly the­o­rize and empir­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gate care opens up ques­tions of main­te­nance, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and inter­de­pen­dence. Trac­ing data prac­tices with care in mind is like­ly to extend some of these insights and con­test others. 

Learn­ing is the­o­rised dif­fer­ent­ly across fields from STS and Inno­va­tion Stud­ies to Psy­chol­o­gy and Edu­ca­tion. Fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the nature of learn­ing under­pin assump­tions about knowl­edge, exper­tise, and ped­a­gogy. What we care to learn about and how we learn to care have impli­ca­tions for our under­stand­ing of data prac­tices since those prac­tices both shape what can be learned and must them­selves be learned. 

Organ­ised by the DARE team, this pan­el seeks to build on and con­tribute to these lit­er­a­tures by bring­ing togeth­er work across data tech­nolo­gies, con­texts of use, intel­lec­tu­al fields, and com­mu­ni­ties of prac­tice to exam­ine the data-care-learn­ing nexus. 

Sub­mis­sions might offer insights into, for example: 

– What data, care, and learn­ing come to mean through their mutu­al entanglement 

– Where process­es of learn­ing and car­ing are locat­ed in data practices 

– Dis­tin­guish­ing between car­ing, learn­ing, and know­ing in rela­tion to data practices 

– How data are cared for, and how data enable or con­strain care 

– What and how we learn through data practices 

– How the nexus of data, care and learn­ing are the­o­rised across dif­fer­ent sites, and with dif­fer­ent publics 

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Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy Europe Con­fer­ence 2025 Vien­na: „Rede­f­i­n­i­tions of Health and Well-being
Call for Pan­els and Round­ta­bles is now OPEN

RZ_­MAEC-2025_­Call-for-Papers

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Call for papers for a spe­cial issue on: Con­tem­po­rary Changes in Med­ical­ly Assist­ed Repro­duc­tion: The Role of Social Inequal­i­ty and Social Norms
Social Inclu­sion Journal

Dead­line for Abstracts: 15.10.2025
Dead­line for Papers: 30.03.2025

Social Inclu­sion, peer-reviewed jour­nal indexed in the Social Sci­ences Cita­tion Index (Web of Sci­ence; Impact Fac­tor: 1.4) and Sco­pus (CiteScore: 3.5), wel­comes new and excit­ing research papers for its upcom­ing issue „Con­tem­po­rary Changes in Med­ical­ly Assist­ed Repro­duc­tion: The Role of Social Inequal­i­ty and Social Norms,” edit­ed by Anne-Kristin Kuh­nt, Jörg Rös­sel, and Heike Trappe.

Since, in 1978, the first baby con­ceived by in vit­ro fer­til­iza­tion was born, fur­ther tech­no­log­i­cal advances, like egg freez­ing, pre-implan­ta­tion diag­nos­tics, and gene edit­ing (CRISPR) have rev­o­lu­tion­ized the con­di­tions for human fer­til­i­ty. This the­mat­ic issue focus­es on how the social con­text, in par­tic­u­lar social inequal­i­ties and social norms, shapes atti­tudes towards these tech­nolo­gies, their use, and their impact. We are inter­est­ed in arti­cles that explore how atti­tudes and pub­lic dis­course on these tech­nolo­gies are shaped by pre­vail­ing gen­der norms and moral ori­en­ta­tions in societies.

Authors inter­est­ed in sub­mit­ting a paper to this issue are encour­aged to read the full call for papers here

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CfP for a pan­el on “Shift­ing states and their his­to­ries in insti­tu­tion­al care”
Anthrostate con­fer­ence “Shift­ing States”
22–24 Octo­ber, 2025
Ams­ter­dam, Netherlands 

✨No reg­is­tra­tion fee, in-per­son only. (EASA net­work on Anthro­polo­gies of the State conference)

If the pan­el abstract below res­onates with your research and you would like to join a bunch of friend­ly peo­ple, please send your abstract to Kris­tine Krause k.krause@uva.nl

The final pan­el includ­ing abstracts need to be sub­mit­ted 11 April, so we would like have your abstract the lat­est 9th April.

Junior and PhD researchers par­tic­u­lar­ly welcome.

Look­ing for­ward to hear­ing from you!

Shift­ing states and their his­to­ries in insti­tu­tion­al care

The anthro­pol­o­gy of the state has long argued that states do not exist as coher­ent units out there but are artic­u­lat­ed in prac­tices, spaces and effects. One of the key spaces in which states have effects on their cit­i­zens are care insti­tu­tions. They respond to cru­cial needs of humans; for instance as places where sick­ness­es are treat­ed and frail bod­ies are tak­en care of. They can also curate major tran­si­tions such as birth and death. Care insti­tu­tions such as hos­pi­tals or nurs­ing homes are places defined by par­tic­u­lar and per­sis­tent forms of inter­ac­tion. These forms – where and how things are done, when and by whom – have often coag­u­lat­ed over time. They are backed up by legit­i­ma­tions which are not easy to ques­tion, because they are part of oth­er non-tan­gi­ble soci­etal insti­tu­tions, such as gen­dered divi­sion of labour, kin­ship and fam­i­ly ide­olo­gies which are spe­cif­ic to his­tor­i­cal­ly grown care and health regimes. These regimes as part of state gov­er­nance can bear traces of pasts such as colo­nial rule, polit­i­cal regimes shifts or spe­cif­ic biopo­lit­i­cal projects of care and con­trol. Insti­tu­tion­al care can also be pro­vid­ed by non-state actors on behalf of the state includ­ing non-prof­it, reli­gious or char­i­ty organ­i­sa­tions but also com­mer­cial or even cor­po­ra­tized actors. The rea­sons why these actors per­form or have tak­en over these tasks, have again their own his­to­ries often relat­ed to shifts in ways of gov­er­nance of wel­fare state regimes.

This pan­el brings togeth­er papers that explore how shift­ing states and their his­to­ries come back resur­face, or take unex­pect­ed forms with­in the spaces and prac­tices of insti­tu­tion­al care. The papers exam­ine how his­tor­i­cal lega­cies shape and haunt care­giv­ing inter­ac­tions, insti­tu­tion­al rou­tines, and the nar­ra­tives and posi­tion­al­i­ties of those involved in these care set­tings. In ask­ing how these pasts are artic­u­lat­ed, linger on or are rep­re­sent­ed in care insti­tu­tions this pan­el under­stands his­to­ry not as some­thing wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered in the back­ground, but as active­ly brought up, mobi­lized and pre­sent­ed in the field or artic­u­lat­ed by the ethno­g­ra­ph­er. The past then becomes “his­to­ry” through prac­tices of actors in the field or through the ana­lyt­i­cal work of the ethno­g­ra­ph­er who iden­ti­fies his­to­ry as an absent pres­ence in the stud­ied sit­u­a­tion or prac­tice. The paper in this pan­el inter­ro­gate the con­sti­tu­tive moments where his­to­ry appears, or is brought up in insti­tu­tion­al care set­tings, ask­ing, which posi­tion­ings, gen­er­a­tional mem­o­ries and nar­ra­tives become artic­u­lat­ed therein.

Orga­nized by the Relo­Care Team & friends from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Amsterdam
(Mar­iusz Sapieha, Matouš Jelínek, Veroni­ka Priel­er, Sha­hana Sid­diqui , Yuan Yan and Kris­tine Krause)

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