Call for Papers: 2nd International Medical Humanities Conference 2019: The Body: In Parts or as Whole
Dates: 31 July – 1 August 2019
Location: Library Auditorium, College of Medicine in Blantyre, Malawi
Dates: 31 July – 1 August 2019
Location: Library Auditorium, College of Medicine in Blantyre, Malawi
‘Bona Charlottesville’ (2015) at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa ©zanele muholi
The College of Medicine is proud to host the 2nd Wellcome Trust & University of Edinburgh-funded International Medical Humanities Conference. This year’s theme brings forward conversations about various discourses and modes of representing the body: in parts or as a whole, as an individual or within community or as part of the environment. High profile issues such as the sale and trafficking of parts of persons with albinism, genetic testing of intersex athletes, migration of bodies across borders reveal charged and emotive positions about autonomy, continuity and connectivity across Africa. This event calls upon artists, researchers, and communities in African studies discuss the production of knowledge about and regulation of the body. How do we represent the life cycle of the body and its experiences from birth until death?
We seek to engage participants from creative, social, research, clinical and artistic domains to explore the transdisciplinary space between the health sciences, social sciences and the arts and humanities. This conference will also serve a starting point to build a medical humanities platform in Malawi from the ground up. It will engage local and regional narratives, continental ideas and practices, and voices from the diaspora. The final day is reserved for networking, proposal generation and an Open Space forum to draw concrete plans for future directions for medical humanities scholarship within the College of Medicine, across Africa and with global partners.
Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to,
· Disability studies
· Gender & sexuality
· Mental health
· Migration and migrant health
· Bioethics and law
· Poverty and economic disparities
· Methodology, Theory & Practice
· Indigenous knowledge systems
· Decolonising medical curricula, spaces & practices
· Race/Racism and Ethnicity
· Climate Change & Environment
This conference offers a unique, atypical format to include abstracts for a 20-minute paper, 10-minute provocation or a 6-minute PechaKucha presentation. We also invite ideas for roundtables, forums, short film viewings, exhibition and art installations, visual field notes, music, poetry, theatre, dance and storytelling. Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, 5 keywords, and short biographical note to the conference organisers by no later than Monday 15 June 2019 at [email protected]. Decisions will be made within 7 days of the deadline. Click here to register.
We will offer a small number of bursaries to cover transport, accommodation and conference attendance costs. Priority will be given to economically disadvantaged presenters. Click here to apply.
This event is hosted by the College of Medicine in collaboration with the following funders and partners: