MAYS Announcements, Events

16th MAYS Meeting CfP Now Open!

16th MAYS Annual Meeting 30th of June-2nd of July 2025, Tilburg, Netherlands and Online (Hybrid)

Submit your abstract here!
Submission Deadline: April 7th 2024

Plural perspectives and evolving practices in Medical Anthropology

The Medical Anthropology Young Scholar Network is pleased to announce its 16th Annual Meeting for 2025 Plural Perspectives and Evolving Practices in Medical Anthropology. We invite scholars, health practitioners, and researchers from diverse disciplinary and academic backgrounds to contribute to an engaging and thought-provoking dialogue. 

Health, illness and healing are deeply multifaceted concepts, shaped by diverse epistemologies, socio-cultural contexts, and power dynamics. Medical anthropology, as a field, offers a versatile lens of observation through which explore these complexities while critically reflecting on its own practices and methodologies. We aim to foster a global dialogue that transcends the epistemological limitations of traditional academic boundaries. Highlighting and interrogating gaps between academic inquiry and local knowledge systems, this meeting seeks to push disciplinary boundaries and explore pathways toward equity in our fields of study in order to explore new possibilities in evolving research approaches. By equity, we refer to the commitment to fair and just research practices that acknowledge historical and structural inequalities, ensuring that marginalized perspectives are meaningfully valued. This includes redistributing power in knowledge production, fostering reciprocal collaborations, and challenging dominant frameworks that perpetuate exclusion. By doing so, this meeting also aims to push the engagement with more decolonial perspectives on medical anthropology. Recognizing the enduring influence of colonial thought on global health approaches, research methodologies, and practices of care, we invite reflections that interrogate these legacies and propose transformative pathways toward equity and justice.

Therefore, we encourage submissions that can be either reflexive, theoretical, ethnographical or historical and the participation of everyone – especially early career researchers from every field, but also practitioner and social workers – in their work, come across questions such as, but not limited to:

  • Decolonial critiques of health and healing practices: thinking and discussing decolonial approaches challenging the dominance of the Global North epistemologies and strive to decenter and critique Eurocentric frameworks in health research and practice. Reflecting also on structural inequities and the power imbalances that shape global health interventions. 
  • Ethnography and positioning in healthcare fields: within this framework it is necessary to reflect and reimagine research ethics and methodologies to be more inclusive and collaborative. By engaging with these critical issues, the meeting seeks to invite reflections on applied methodologies of research in the field of healthcare and healthcare humanities. 
  • Intersectional challenges and opportunities in global health research: by bridging gaps between academic inquiry and local knowledge systems, this meeting seeks to push disciplinary boundaries and explore pathways toward equity in our fields of study in order to explore new possibilities in evolving research approaches.
  • Efforts to amplify marginalized voices and address inequities in research and practice: contributions that bridge academic inquiry with lived experiences, grassroots initiatives, and policy-making are particularly encouraged. In this regard, we also welcome reflections on how activist and grassroots movements engagements shape medical anthropology, from influencing research ethics to driving structural change in health and healing practices.

Application Process

We invite you to submit an abstract of no more than 350-500 words at the link below by April 7th. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the middle of April.

Submission HERE

Deadline for Abstract Submission (350-500 words): April 7th, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: April 16th, 2025
Deadline for Paper Submission (3,000-5,000 words): June 1st, 2025

Format of the Meeting

At the meeting, sessions will be organized based on thematic overlap. Participants will be paired with a discussant  for every session who will comment on their work after their presentation. The discussant’s role includes introducing the session, identifying the common thread linking all presentations, and facilitating reflections and questions. To ensure a well-prepared discussion, we ask each participant to submit a paper of 3,000-5,000 words by June 1st, allowing discussants to organize their time effectively. 

Given the nature of the meeting – intended as both a safe, judgement-free space and a possible springboard for other conferences – this year we welcome candidates who are curious about taking on the role of discussant. You can apply to be a discussant while submitting your abstract by selecting the relevant option in the submission form. We will discuss the details once the forms are filled in; marking yourself as interested in the first form does not imply any obligation at this early stage. 

More information on workshops, keynotes, and events will follow in due time. 

Beyond the meeting presentations, we will organize a social picnic by the forest near the campus on the 2nd of July.

The meeting will have a hybrid format.

Participation fee

In order to cover basic expenses, we ask for a 30 EUR participation fee for in-person participants, to be paid in cash upon arrival (offline participation). 

Financial Support

A small amount of funding is available for EASA members taking part in the Annual Meeting in person and who have financial need. Funding will be given in the form of a fixed stipend based upon the number of participants requesting funding (likely around 80 Euro). If you would like to request funding for this meeting, we ask that you indicate this on your registration form. For those that may be able to secure funds from elsewhere (i.e. departmental funding) this would help us to provide a greater amount of funds to those without any sources of funding. We are aware that the price of accommodation in Tilburg can be prohibiting, and we will try to work with participants to find affordable options. Concrete details on accommodation will be forthcoming after abstract acceptances. 

We look forward to welcoming you in Tilburg!

MAYS Coordinators (mays.easa@gmail.com)

Simona Maisano, Department of Humanities, University for foreigners of Siena

Matteo Valoncini, Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna

MAYS Announcements, Events

15th MAYS Meeting CfP Now Open!

15th MAYS Annual Meeting 18th-20th June 2024, Bologna, Italy and Online (Hybrid)

Submit your abstract here!
Submission Deadline: April 8th 2024

Critical Anthropology and Global Health: Challenges and Possibilities

Global Health perspectives have provided a more holistic approach to health, leading to the emergence of several programs, mostly in medical departments, around the 2000’s that comprehensively address health issues. Within the framework of Global Health, researchers are actively involved in addressing emerging issues related to health, illness, and the human body, contributing to the creation of a more integrated and comprehensive foundation for health-related investigations and implementations. However, critical medical anthropology has highlighted a rising ethical problem within this framework. Global Health – as an area of interests, research and practices – shaped a division between a healthy Global North and sick Global South. While epidemiological inquiries initiated this stereotype, one can see that such a division has gone beyond the presence or absence of diseases,  it is gradually rooted within cultural, economic, environmental, infrastructural, political, social, and technological processes, also contributing in reinforcing the epistemic centralities of  academia in the Global North. 

This year’s MAYS Annual Meeting critically focuses on the relationship between Global Health  and medical anthropology. Since the division between Global North and Global South now clearly goes beyond clinical or public health programs, critical global health studies have broadened, and the boundaries of disciplines have loosened. Understanding the processes that produce health means looking not only at the relationships between social actors, but also at the relationships between those actors and the environment, infrastructures, flora, fauna, or bacteria; anything that can be called non-human. As the division evolves within the intersection of Human and Non-Human elements, medical anthropology’s critical approach may require a reevaluation of its inquiry framework, aiming for transformative engagement with our ‘field’. In particular, we want to dwell on the role of ethnographic sensibilities that bring forward non-humans and their often-overlooked influence on the way humans experience, perceive, and construct health, illness, and the body. We welcome critical insights that explore such topics beyond disciplinary barriers. We invite medical anthropologist, social epidemiologist public health experts or geographers, among others, who in their work come across questions such as:

  • What does it mean to study “health” today, when it is defined so differently by various stakeholders across the globe?  
  • What does anthropological research do or could do within Global Health projects? 
  • What is the future of Global Health? 
  • How and when are ethnographic approaches used in Global Health studies?
  • What kind of knowledge do they produce and how? How do the different disciplines find or do not find a space of dialogue with each other? 

We invite papers that fall into one of the following categories:

  • Discussions on interdisciplinarity in the social studies of health – thinking and discussing research topics and fieldwork experiences that lie at the intersections of disciplines and epistemologies,  facing conceptual frictions between different definitions of health, disease, illness, and bodies. 
  • Mixing methods in Global Health research – experiences and questions on how to approach research topics creatively, mixing ethnography with action-research or quantitative approaches, both inside and outside of academia. 
  • Rethinking Global Health as a concept – bring a critical perspective on the current state of Global Health studies and its boundaries, aiming to answer a question of how to best mix academic curiosity with practicality of applied research approaches, including reflecting on the historical roots of the framework and its heritage. What are the different ideas of the role a researcher should play socially? Can we further debate on Global Health’s validity as an established research paradigm?

Application Process

We invite you to submit an abstract of no more than 350-500 words at the link below by April 8th, and notification of acceptances will be sent by the end of April.

Submission HERE

Deadline for Abstract Submission (350-500 words): April 8th, 2024
Notification of Acceptance: April 29th, 2043
Deadline for Paper Submission (3,000-5,000 words): June 1st, 2024

Format of the Meeting

At the meeting, sessions will be organized based on the thematic overlap. Participants will be paired with a discussant that will comment on their work after their presentation. For this purpose, we ask you to submit a paper of 3,000-5,000 words by June 1st. More information on workshops, keynotes, and events will follow in due time. 

Beyond the meeting presentations, we will organize a social picnic by the hill accessible by a short hike on June 20th.  

The meeting will have a hybrid format.

Participation fee

In order to cover basic expenses, we ask for a 30 EUR participation fee for in-person participants, to be paid in cash upon arrival (offline participation). 

Financial Support

A small amount of funding is available for EASA members taking part in the Annual Meeting in person and who have financial need. Funding will be given in the form of a fixed stipend based upon the number of participants requesting funding (likely around 80 Euro). If you would like to request funding for this meeting, we ask that you indicate this on your registration form. For those that may be able to secure funds from elsewhere (i.e. departmental funding) this would help us to provide a greater amount of funds to those without any sources of funding. We are aware that the price of accommodation in Geneva can be prohibiting, and we will try to work with participants to find affordable options. Concrete details on accommodation will be forthcoming after abstract acceptances. 

We look forward to welcoming you to Bologna!

MAYS Coordinators (mays.easa@gmail.com)

Matteo Valoncini, Department of History and Cultures, University of Bologna

Robert D. Smith, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Geneva Graduate Institute