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Since many of you were asking for it, here are the recordings of the Hospital Ethnographies meetings on our YouTube channel!

Please find below details onthe Fourth Online Workshop: “The Hospital in Transit”, This time, workshop will be dealing with: “Hospital Collaborations”.

30^th of November 2023, online at 4 pm to 6 pm CET

Zoom link for the event: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/64049374488

We will explore questions like: What is the changing global role of hospitals? Do our research methods also have changed after COVID-19? Both penetrable and secluded social spaces, hospitals have a thick history with anthropology.

During the workshop we will discuss 4 thought-provoking ethnographic case presentations:

1. “Healthcare providers and anthropologists in collaboration: A case study from a gynaecological and obstetric service of a hospital in Barcelona”, Mariana Campos Lichtsztejn and Anna Molas Phd candidate at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2. “Hospital fieldwork as a social experimental setting: Insights from a paediatric and maternal hospital in Barcelona”, Paula Martone, MSc  – Phd Candidate AFIN Research Group, Departament d’Antropologia Social i Cultural, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
3. “Navigating in a Foreign Field: Obstacles in front of Hospital Access for Ethnographers in Turkey” Öykü İnal, Freie Universät Berlin
4.  “Anthropology and Quality Improvement in UK NHS Mental Health Services”, Matthew Day, Anthropology PhD Research Student, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent

Chair: Mirko Pasquini PhD, Centre for Medical Humanities, Uppsala University (mirko.pasquini@antro.uu.se)

As MAYS we share what EASA published with respect to the current situation in Gaza.

Residential buildings 150 m from the Palestinian Tower, which were destroyed during the first week of intensive bombing by Israeli aircraft.
Source: Al Araby, License

The executive committee of the European Association of Social Anthropologists extends its solidarity to those mourning the loss of their loved ones in both Palestine and Israel.

We strongly condemn the violence perpetrated by the Israeli state against the civilians of Gaza. This concerns all the forms of violence inflicted upon Palestinians: air strikes claiming indiscriminately the lives of a population half of which are children; the massive destruction of livelihoods and infrastructure – including hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, and the Islamic University of Gaza; the starving of the population by cutting its access to water, electricity, fuel, food, medical supplies, and humanitarian aid.

As anthropologists with expertise on state violence, human rights, peace, conflict and security, we warn against decontextualised narratives of conflict and ‘terrorism’. The genocidal framing of Palestinians as culprits, as ‘human animals’, and as deserving of collective punishment has already incited murderous hatred against Muslims and Arabs in other parts of the world, and is likely to further subject Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to settler violence, adding to the state violence they are already victims of.

As anthropologists based in Europe, we also strongly condemn the support of the EU and of European governments to acts amounting to war crimes under international law. We urge governments to respect international law provisions that protect civilians and to understand that their actions and words bear heavy consequences likely to spill over in generalised violence against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians, and those who support their plight – including the many dissenting voices in Israel and elsewhere.

We are deeply concerned about the repressive measures taken in some universities, in Europe and elsewhere, against those who expressed their solidarity with Palestinians and were suspended or harassed. This totalitarian silencing of dissent in the face of violence and war is unacceptable and in full dissonance with the goal of higher education to foster critical thinking among students and the public. We also condemn the violent repression of peaceful protests in Europe and elsewhere.

We heed the call of our colleagues from Birzeit University to speak up against genocidal violence, occupation, and the flagrant violation of human rights in Gaza and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and call for the academic community to fulfil its mission of critique towards oppressive structures, of warning against the rippling effects of violence and occupation, and of speaking truth to power.

We call for an immediate ceasefire and immediate humanitarian relief for the people of Gaza, and a commitment from Israel and all governments to a peace process that deals with the historic inequalities, injustice and structural violence in the region.

Ana Ivasiuc, President EASA
On behalf of EASA’s Executive Committee

MAYS is short of another co-coordinator!

As it is offcially the fall again, it’s time for Coordinator Elections in MAYS!! Do you want to take an active role in connecting students and early career scholars with an interest in Medical Anthropology? Would you like to organize the next MAYS conference? Do you have ideas about how to expand and deepen the MAYS network? Would you like to expand your skills and contacts and become an organizing member of EASA?

To apply you must be a doctoral student or an early-career academic in a European university, and have about a full day or two per month minimum, on average, to give to our quickly growing community. The co-coordinator post is a two-year post. A new coordinator will take place of Chandni Shyam, who needed to resign early from her post and work alongside Magdalena Góralska, who will stay as the second co-coordinator for another year.

If you would like to apply please sent us an email to mays.easa@gmail.com with two attachments: (1) your academic CV, and (2) a Word document with short answers of not more than 200 words to each of those three following prompts:

• A short synopsis of research interests and projects.
• Experiences that speak to your eligibility for the role.
• What would be your plans for the next meeting and for MAYS in general?

Application deadline: 23 October 2022, till the end of the day.

Thank you in advance for your interest and application! If you have any questions regarding the application and/or MAYS coordination, please do not hesitate to contact us at mays.easa@gmail.com.

All the best

MAYS Team

Dear MAYS members!

We’d like to welcome Chandni Shyam from the University of Utrecht, Netherlands to the post of MAYS Coordinator for the years 2021-2023.

Chandni will be taking over from Anthony Rizk and will be co-coordinating with Magdalena Góralska. We are very much looking forward to Chandni’s enthusiasm and contributions to the MAYS network and her ideas for its development!

In case you missed it, this was her application statement:

SHORT SYNOPSIS OF YOUR RESEARCH INTERESTS AND PROJECT

I have a long standing interest in medical anthropology, especially in narratives that are essential but overlooked. I have worked extensively on gender and mental healthcare as a Reserach Associate at IIT Madras. During this time, I also worked briefly on the unequal attention paid to affective labour of mental healthcare nurses in Indian hospitals. Right now, I am working on a second masters for which I have been doing fieldwork on Covid-19 vaccinations in Chennai and the ways in which information about the state and vaccines work towards compliance. I truly believe that healthcare has to be universally available and culturally sensitive. Furthermore, my own lived experience as a cancer survivor has helped expand my scopes of what medical anthropology can do.

EXPERIENCES THAT SPEAK TO YOUR ELIGIBILITY FOR THE ROLE

I have organised many events, both online and offline at numerous instances of my academic career. More importantly, I have always worked on creating and nurturing a community of learners. For example, I am a core team member of the Students for Cultural Anthropology Journal, which is a student initiative to foster peer review. My work with the journal stems from the belief that community is really important for thriving in academia. After all, whatever we write is on the back of many before us and for those with and after us. I also think that there is a lot of scope for collaborative and experimental learning in medical anthropology. My explorations in writing literary ethnography and quantitative ethnography have been fruitful in this regard but I really need a good community for learning and growing with.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR MAYS?

I would like to increase the social media presence of MAYS through reading groups and field discussions. It would also be interesting to have coffee talks online and offline that can give open up space for learning about new ethnographic explorations in medical anthropology.

Congratulations again, Chandni!

Dear MAYS members!

We’d like to welcome Magdalena Goralska from the University of Warsaw to the post of MAYS Coordinator!

Magdalena will be taking over from Francesca Cancelliere and will be co-coordinating with Anthony Rizk. We are very much looking forward to Magdalena’s enthusiasm and contributions to the MAYS network and her ideas for its development!

In case you missed it, this was her application statement:

SHORT SYNOPSIS OF YOUR RESEARCH INTERESTS AND PROJECT

I study knowledge production practices on the Internet, in particular in relation to health and nutrition. While in recent years my fieldwork was digitally-focused, I am going to be back to the offline, when continuing my research into medical knowledge hegemonies with a research on the Lyme disease controversies in Poland. Over the years I also studied discourses on agricultural biotechnology (Poland) and food practices in relation to identity (India). I have also studied urban transformation (Poland), when I was just starting my anthropological journey back during my bachelors. I am an affiliated research fellow with my own project at the Kozminski University in Warsaw (networked expert knowledge production online), a PhD student at the University of Warsaw (the Lyme disease project). I did my BA studies at the University of Warsaw (BA in Cultural Anthropology, BA in Liberal Arts), and I did my master studies at the Jadavpur University in Kolkata (MA in Sociology), University of Warsaw (MA in Cultural Anthropology), and the University of Oxford (MSc in the Social Science of the Internet).

EXPERIENCES THAT SPEAK TO YOUR ELIGIBILITY FOR THE ROLE

Over the years I have been actively engaged in various organisational and representative roles related to academic life in general.
– During my BAs and Masters, for three years (2012-2013, 2015-2017) I was a member of the board, including one years as a chairwoman, in the Collegium Invisibile Academic Society – the largest independent student-lead organisation in Poland, aimed at supporting academia-oriented students and schoolchildren. I have organised fundraising, workshops and conferences within the society, as well as I did a handful of administrative work.
– I have also organised strictly academic events, such as the Ethnology without Borders 2015 Warsaw edition, and two conference panels (both this year at the 4S/EASST 2020 conference in Prague).
– While studying in Oxford I coordinated a series of seminars at my college (Kellogg), as well as served as a student representative at the Oxford Internet Institute, when I was studying, for two consequent years.
– During my BA studies I was active in the University of Warsaw’s student associations, organising public talks and student research projects.
– For 4 years I have worked in the NGO sector in Poland, and much of my work included cooperation with international organisations, that taught me how to navigate conundrums of the third sector.
My experiences prove my organisational skills, as well as an ability to adjust to various environments, not only as a part of an ethnographic fieldwork skill set. As I am not engaged in a formal role in any other institution, I could bring in some fresh energy into the network.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR MAYS?

1. Continue to strengthen network structures and ties, as networks are about people. In-between the annual MAYS meetings, we could keep up the paper-swap format, with a more open form that also includes a chance to discuss ideas. We could have an open Hive-mind MAYS list of network members, who are willing to discuss a topic/an idea/a paper with another network member. Every member on the list would choose key words that best describe their expertise, and a member seeking a feedback could approach whoever on the list for help and discussion over email exchange or a Zoom call.
2. MAYS 2021. Applied/Engaged Medical Anthropology in the Post/pandemic Times. The next meeting would be addressing the following: How has the pandemic influenced medical anthropology? Did it change it? How has medical anthropology approached the pandemic? How is medical anthropology being applied now, what have changed? What about being engaged? The meeting would focus on what the global healthcare crisis have brought to the discipline, both theoretically and practically, as well as offer a workshop on applied and engaged anthropology that focuses on issues related to medicine, health, and the body.
3. Except an annual meeting, I believe there is a space to run online methodological peer-to-peer workshops, free of charge, once a quarter, that could cover issues such as: participant observation in the digital age, visual methods, mixing methods, militant ethnography, ethical dilemmas of medically engaged anthropology, how-to of applied anthropology, among other topics.
4. What about an Early Career Paper Award?

Congratulations again, Magdalena!

All the best
Anthony and Francesca

Dear MAYS members!

We’d like to welcome Anthony Rizk from the Graduate Institute of Geneva to the post of MAYS Coordinator!

Anthony will be taking over from Ursula Probst and will be co-coordinating with Francesca Cancelliere. We are very much looking forward to Anthonys contribution to the MAYS network and his ideas for the development of the network!

In case you missed it, this was his application statement:

I am from Lebanon and currently a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of Geneva. I first studied medical laboratory sciences, and my research project, in the anthropology of global health and infectious disease, is an ethnography of laboratory medicine focusing on the bio-economies involved in the movement of antimicrobial resistant pathogens between laboratories in the Middle East. I am also part of a project at the Global Health Centre at the Graduate Institute of Geneva working on the political economy and global governance of pathogen and benefit sharing. Before starting a PhD, I studied antimicrobial resistance, war and healthcare in Tripoli and have written on sexuality and gender politics in Lebanon.

Coming from a region where medical anthropology is underrepresented, I am very grateful for a network like MAYS. I attended the last MAYS conference in Turin, where I met some wonderful people and benefited from learning from their experiences and sharing mine. I also joined the team that has been updating the MAYS website with information for students on medical anthropology programs worldwide, which will hopefully help connect students to medical anthropologists and relevant programs. In terms of organizational experience, I worked as a research assistant at the American University of Beirut between 2012 and 2016, during which I assisted in organizing and later co-organizing a number of conferences and meetings with epidemiologists and anthropologists. I’ve also been an organizer with several social and political activist organizations, all of which involved a careful attention to the politics and dynamics of organizing meetings and taking into consideration structural issues that affect participation (class, income, disability, gender, etc.) that I hope to pay careful attention, as much as feasibly possible, in organizing MAYS activities and the conference. At the moment at the Graduate Institute, I am working on strengthening coordination between students and faculty with the department seminar series and broadening the spectrum of speakers.

The MAYS network has expanded considerably, and I’ll work on increasing this momentum. One way to increase the participation of young scholars and students from many parts of Europe (not to mention countries bordering Europe/the Mediterranean) is to translate key parts of the MAYS websites and the activity announcements disseminated by MAYS and by continuing the last MAYS conference organizers’ decision to host the next conference outside of the main European cities. In addition to the conference, I can work on increasing MAYS’ activities and visibility by organizing public webinars with medical anthropologists. My proposal for the next MAYS meeting is to focus on organizing discussion-based groups that focus on new directions in medical anthropology, whether applied, methodological or theoretical. Depending on the interests of participants, these can include themes such as translating medical anthropology to new publics, conducting ethnography in the metropoles, what comes after the anthropology of suffering, and theory-building from the subaltern or global south.

Congratulations again, Anthony!

All the best
Francesca and Ursula