Submit your abstract here!
    New Submission Deadline: April 7th 2021

    12th MAYS Annual Meeting: 19 – 21 August 2021, Warsaw

    Medical anthropology for all? Changing anthropology in a pandemic world

    The pandemic has been a world-shattering phenomenon, a single event that has so clearly affected all societies across the globe. Even as vaccinations against COVID-19 are being administrated in many countries worldwide, health experts are unable to predict when the pandemic will end. Going forward, we will all continue to contend to changes it brought to the many registers of everyday life globally. Anthropology – a discipline that changes with the world in which it engages – must too adjust accordingly.

    As COVID-19 dominates academic research and funding, challenging our work, we invite student and early-career researchers from across the social sciences to join us in a discussion on the effects and affects of the pandemic within fieldworks and disciplines.

    In 2021 we are dedicating the Annual MAYS Meeting to an issue that we see as pressing to all of social sciences in the post/pandemic times. As such, we encourage submissions from graduate students and early-career scholars in medical anthropology and related fields, as well as from those who locate themselves at the periphery, but were forced by the circumstances to engage with health-related social sciences. Comparative pieces on the before and after of the pandemic are particularly welcome.

    The meeting will be held in Warsaw, after exactly 10 years since the last MAYS meeting took place in the capitol city of Poland. Provisional dates for the meeting are August 19th – 21st.

    Process

    We invite:

    1. Reflexive pieces that dwell on methodological changes in response to the pandemic in the different phases (whether in planning a project, implementation during fieldwork, or post-fieldwork analysis, or others), focus on disciplinary changes, including the praxis of conducting fieldworks, and consequences of the overbearing focus on the pandemic within social sciences – what contributions can, and should, anthropology be making in living in a post-pandemic world?
    2. Ethnographic papers on the different ways the pandemic has affected fieldworks, research focuses, research participants, and researchers themselves – papers that document how everyday life has, or has not, changed during the pandemic in our respective field sites.
    3. Theory-oriented pieces that take on the new and old theoretical engagements emerging as we try to come to grips with the effect of the pandemic on everyday life, recognizing changes that took place and advocating for changes that must take place.

    We invite you to submit an abstract of no more than 350-500 words at this link by April 7th April, 2021. After the notification of acceptance (April 15th), you will be asked to submit a paper of no more than 3,000 words by July 5th, 2020.

    Submission HERE

    Deadline for Abstract Submission: April 7th, 2021
    Notification of Acceptance: April 15th, 2021
    Deadline for Paper Submission: July 5th, 202    1

    Format 

    Each workshop participant will be paired with a discussant with whom they will share their paper prior to the meeting. MAYS Annual Meetings usually consist of the conference part and the workshop part; this year, due to the pandemic, we decided to test a new format and hold workshops separately over a span of few months – more information of MAYS Methods Workshops will soon follow.

    The event will, most likely, be hybrid – combining both the online and the offline, if the circumstances allow.

    **To enjoy the summer weather, we will organise a picnic lunch at the nearby Łazienki Królewskie Park and the conference will be followed by a hike/day trip on Saturday August 21th**

    Participation fee

    As with previous meetings, there will be a registration fee of 20 Euros to contribute towards the costs of coffee breaks and lunch. We kindly ask you to pay the fee in cash upon arrival. 

    As we are planning for the event to be a hybrid one, we will try to provide travel reimbursements to all EASA members taking part in the Annual Meeting. More information pending on availability and amount of travel bursaries.

    We look forward to welcoming you to Warsaw!

    MAYS Coordinators (mays.easa@gmail.com)

    Magdalena Góralska, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw

    Anthony Rizk, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Graduate Institute Geneva

    Published by MAYS