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• 36. Exploring health in the context of territorial inequalities

  Conveners: Daniele Karasz, Sladana Adamovic, Adrienne Homberger

  Stream: Health in/and Crisis

  Abstract: Ethnographic research is becoming increasingly important in the analysis of territorial inequalities in Europe and beyond, with health and healthcare playing a crucial role (Hussain et al. 2024). Accordingly, we welcome research on how territorial inequality affects health, well-being, and access to healthcare and social services in different local contexts. It will explore intersecting structural factors, such as poor housing conditions, immobility, unhealthy working conditions or environmental and systemic inaction impacting health and well-being. Further, it examines whether and how national and local policies exacerbate health-related vulnerabilities in certain areas by neglecting infrastructure renewal, underfunding public services, and creating systemic barriers to equitable health outcomes for marginalised communities. A special focus lies on how the latter foster a sense of being “left behind” and neglected among communities living in marginalized areas. 

  We aim to explore strategies that communities develop to counteract local challenges. We especially welcome contributions highlighting how civil society organisations and grassroots initiatives – often led by women, queer and racialised communities - act against these structural barriers, by addressing health related vulnerabilities within their communities. Such initiatives may create alternative networks of support and challenge the status quo of exclusionary policies. Therefore, it examines the conditions necessary for such approaches to succeed. 

  The panel will foster a discussion on how territorial inequalities shape health outcomes and deepen perceptions of exclusion. Simultaneously, we aim to underline pathways for rebuilding trust through sustainable and inclusive interventions. We invite submissions grounded in ethnographic research, critical policy analysis, and community-led interventions.
• 42. History in Care: Tracing Historical Entanglements

  Conveners: Kristine Krause, Monika Palmberger

  Stream: Health in/and Crisis

  Abstract: This panel explores the lingering presence of history in spaces, practices, and narratives of care, challenging the tendency to focus only on the ‘new’ in moments of health and care crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. This panel invites contributions that interrogate when and how history lingers on or returns in unexpected ways.  Health crises such as Covid have exposed the often invisible role of care, revealed hidden hierarchies and prompted redefinitions of health and well-being.

  Care practices - how, where, and by whom they are delivered - are shaped by historical legacies of interconnectedness and hierarchy, including colonial and imperial histories. These pasts not only influence individual experiences but also embed care within broader collectives, marked by status, gender, and racialized inequalities.

  Bringing "historicity" back to medical anthropology and the anthropology of care, this panel invites papers that build on and expand seminal work in medical anthropology and care studies (e.g., Medical Anthropology 2018, 37(8), and History and Anthropology 2021, 32(4)). The focus is on the historical dimensions of:

  • Spaces (regions and buildings) where care occurs,
  • Practices, routines, and protocols of care,
  • Entitlements, relationships, and belonging,
  • Narratives and subject positions.

  Privileging “history in care” over “history of care”, we understand care as a central element of social organisation (Thelen 2015) that can make historical entanglements visible in particular ways. We welcome contributions that address questions of who provides care, where care takes place, and how practices and narratives related to pasts evolve around care relations.
• 45. Making sense of mortality in the era of polycrisis

  Conveners: Maija Butters

  Stream: Health in/and Crisis

  Abstract: In an era defined by systemic crises—ecological collapse, geopolitical strife, economic instability, and public health emergencies—death and mortality seem to surround us in multiple forms. The concept of  "Thanatocene," (Bonneuil & Fressoz 2015) encapsulates the pervasive spectre of death that looms over contemporary society, highlighting the threats to life and well-being that characterise our current epoch. Yet, simultaneously, we witness a paradoxical obsession towards human immortality, which takes the forms of imaginative digital technological innovations, as well as the extreme medicalisation of every aspect of life.

  In this panel, we seek to critically examine how individuals and/or communities navigate the practices and politics of decline and death in the context of the current polycrisis around the world. We welcome papers that scrutinise various responses to individual, social, and ecological aspects of death and how those might reflect broader political dynamics. In light of the overwhelming crises we face, how does our understanding of mortality shift, and what implications does this have for our political and ethical frameworks?

  We invite scholars to explore how individuals and communities are responding in the face of the polycrisis. Different approaches to death-related practices and negotiations are welcomed in the presentations, including:

  • Medical technologies concerning death and longevity
  • Policies and rhetoric of control/decision-making regarding death and/or prolonging life
  • Medical solutions for existential, psychological, or social matters related to death
  • Digital and/or virtual responses to individual, social, or planetary death
  • Religious and/or aesthetic responses to individual, social, or planetary (im)mortality
• 49. (Post)socialist health and medicine: examining alternative political economies, biopolitics and circulations

  Conveners: Alila Brossard Antonielli, Nils Graber

  Stream: Health in/and Crisis

  Abstract: After the Cold War, the experiences of socialist health models have been rendered invisible, with capitalist health systems becoming the default. Ethnographies have shown the transformations of the post-socialist transition leading to privatisation, the emigration of health professionals, and the continuities of some organisations and practices. A growing body of historiography is focusing on the diversity of medical knowledge in training and research, public health interventions, pharmaceutical and biomedical production in former and current socialist countries, also paying attention to the circulations to and from the Global South, and beyond states, within organisations and social movements. With the ongoing austerity policies impacting health systems since 2008, the hospital crisis accelerated by the Coronavirus pandemic and the continuous inequality of access to pharmaceutical products, there is growing interest for alternative models from socialist experiences. While socialist practices are often fraught with contradictions and tensions, sometimes leading to failed experiments and exploitative practices, we believe that they are worthy of consideration in their diversity and their own dynamics. This panel invites researchers from medical anthropology and other disciplines to interrogate (post) socialist medicine and health models and how their continuities and/or legacies shaped current health practices, looking at former state socialist countries and beyond, including local organisations and social movements. We welcome papers dwelling on the circulations of medical ideas and their materialities; care practices; public health interventions; medical technologies and pharmaceutical production and distribution; between social medicine and socialist medicine; and the relations between health professionals, patients, state and non-state actors. 

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• 60. Crisis of Digital Addictions: Anthropological Perspectives on a Growing Concern

  Conveners: Suzana Jovicic

  Stream: Health in/and Crisis

  Abstract: While substance-based addictions have long been subject of crisis narratives and regulatory initiatives, behavioural addictions remain a relatively peripheral and awkward category, often eluding diagnostic frameworks. However, the last decade has brought digital addictions into the public spotlight with a renewed sense of urgency. Despite considerable public scrutiny, there is still little consensus on this subject across disciplines. This is partly due to the profound and provocative questions that the debate, ranging from wellbeing to harm, raises in relation to previously taken-for-granted assumptions: What can constitute an object of addiction? How should social relationships be constructed? To what extent can technologies be understood to possess (addictive) agency? Is disconnection truly desirable and for whom?

  This roundtable seeks to develop a distinctly anthropological perspective on digital addiction and harms, a topic which to date has received little attention within anthropology. It will do so through an expansive and robust conversation, that embraces both sceptical and concerned voices. The roundtable is part of a larger initiative culminating in an edited volume on digital addictions (Tulasiewicz & Jovicic, forthcoming). 

  We invite abstracts that address contentious issues surrounding digital addiction, ranging from models of causality to treatment modalities or epistemological authorities. Roundtable participants will be invited to contribute to the debate by preparing brief statements on overreaching questions shared in advance.  

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• Emerging perspectives: Master’s students panel on critical engagements in medical anthropology

  Conveners: Andreas Krauskopf, Paula Pospichal, Agnes Köchl

  Stream: Other

  Abstract: This panel welcomes contributions from students who are working on or have recently finished their master’s theses in medical anthropology or related disciplines engaging with well-being and health. We are master’s students ourselves, currently researching topics such as the management and perception of chronic diseases (e.g., ME/CFS and thyroid diseases), power dynamics in healthcare, and differing perspectives on mental health in a migration context. Aiming to gather master’s students with related research interests, we invite contributions located within the following thematic fields: Power relations, gender and intersectionality, migrant/refugee health(care), chronicity, disability, health activism, mental health and psychotherapy/psychiatry, medical pluralism. Through the panel, these young scholars can share their research projects among each other as well as with scholars on a more advanced level. The panel hopes to provide them with the unique opportunity to get in contact with and receive valuable feedback from differently positioned experts in the sub-discipline or related fields. At the same time, it supports them in creating and fostering networks with other master´s students with similar research interests at universities across Europe. The panel's convenors share the observation that the current global situation necessitates redefinitions of health, healing and well-being in multiple ways. By creating a safe(r) space particularly reserved for master´s students to present their work-in-progress or thesis findings, the panel simultaneously fosters the inclusion of potential future experts in debates about futures of health and well-being, and urges these aspiring scholars to critically engage with the search for such redefinitions in their work.

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• Call for Labs

  Conveners: Ursula Probst

  Stream: Other

  Abstract: The MAE/EASA 2025 Conference on Medical Anthropology is inviting proposals for Laboratories that explore the theme "Redefinitions of Health and Well-being." This format aims to foster experimentation and interdisciplinary conversations.

  Laboratory sessions can explore a variety of methods, concepts, ideas and approaches with the aim of stimulating critical thinking, collaboration, creativity and imagination. Forms of expression may include, but are not limited to, music, drawing, embroidery, photography, poetry, mapping, urban exploration, activities in parks or along canals, and guided walks. Sessions can be scheduled for either 90 or 105 minutes: those planning outdoor activities will have 105 minutes available, while indoor sessions will be scheduled for 90 minutes.

  Please note that due to the hybrid format of the conference, labs can be proposed for either on-site or hybrid participation. For hybrid labs, a pre-registration process is required and at least one organiser must be present on-site to facilitate the session. It is the responsibility of the conveners to manage the pre-registration process.

  Proposals must contain:

  • Lab title
  • the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the convenor(s) (max 3)
  • abstract (up to 250 words) outlining the Lab's objectives, methods, and procedures.
  • technical requirements (include any technological, material and logistical questions necessary for the Lab)
  • venue/location (indicate any requirements, as well as any pre-agreements you have reached with relevant groups/institutions)
  • modality (hybrid or on site only); please also indicate if there is a limit to the number of participants and if the lab requires pre-registration.