Conferences
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
“TRANSFORMATIONS OF POSTWAR EUROPE: MEDICINE, BODIES AND
TECHNOLOGIES”
27 – 30 May 2024
Call for papers
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
“TRANSFORMATIONS OF POSTWAR EUROPE: MEDICINE, BODIES AND
TECHNOLOGIES”
Dates: 27 – 30 May 2024
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
The postwar era was marked by the rapid growth of technologies that developed in different social, economic, and political contexts on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Was this development dependent on the specific contexts and how? Or, was it a universal tendency establishing itself regardless of the ideological settings? Did technology playback on ideology? Could it reshape political utopias and institutional practices? The conference aims to explore the transformation of post-war Europe through the lens of medicine, care and related technologies, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the changing concept of care and hence the changes in relationships between the individual, the society, and the state. Based on the assumptions of the ERC-funded LEVIATHAN project, the emphasis is on the interconnectedness of Europe, on the entangled history that involves different forms of interaction – intersections, exchanges, competition, conflicts – between “the blocs”, between different societies and states.
Technologies are seen in a broad sociological-anthropological perspective as part of biopolitics, i.e., the social and political power governing over bodies and minds, intertwined with technologies of governing the Self. Special emphasis is placed on medical technologies and the variety of ethical issues associated with them and their essential role in defining and changing medical staff–patient relationships. For more
Sofia Leviathan team took part in the conference
“Beyond
Binaries: Gender, Sexuality, and Medicine Across Post-War Europe, 1945-1991″,
9 -10 June 2023, in Hamburg, Germany.
Organised by the Hamburg team with attendance and particpation from all of the Leviathan groups, ‘Beyond Binaries’ hosted scholars from a wide range of institutions to consider gender, sexuality, and medicine in Post-War Europe as part of the ERC ‘Taming the European Leviathan’ project. The conference considered how gender and sexuality – broadly conceived both methodologically and thematically – helps to inform historical understanding of the role of medicine in post-war Europe. It examined the ways that thinking ‘beyond binaries’ in its many forms allows for new perspectives on the role of medicine in post-war European lives. For more.
Leviathan team participtation in
European Social Science History Conference,
12 – 15 April 2023, Sweden
Members of the ERC-funded project Taming the European Leviathan: The Legacy of Post-War Medicine and the Common Good participated in the biennial European Social Science History Conference held in Gothenburg, Sweden, from 12 to 15 April, 2023. Organized every two years by the International Institute of Social History (IISH), the ESSHC and its meetings are venues for in-depth scholarly discussions on a variety of historical topics, bringing together scholars from different countries around the world, using different methods of social science. The Leviathan project team initiated and organized three panels in three different thematic networks of the conference, reflecting the wide range of topics covered by the Leviathan project. The debates in these panels, as well as in the other panels in which the principal investigators and the researchers of the project participated, expanded the scholarly networks of team members and opened up further perspectives. For more
MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY DEPARTMENT 