Social Science calls for papers / meetings & conferences

Call for Presenters: International Street Medicine Symposium IX

October 24-26, 2013 Boston, Massachusetts

The International Street Medicine Symposium Committee is pleased to extend an open invitation for presentation proposal submissions. While we are particularly interested in exploring themes related to continuity and coordination of care across the spectrum of homelessness, streets-to-housing interventions, and integration of Street Medicine programming into local hospitals and academic institutions, submissions in any topic area related to the health care of unsheltered homeless populations are welcome. Street Medicine providers and related organizations are encouraged to submit proposals for one of the following three presentation format categories:

A. Lecture (35 min. large-group presentation + 10 min. discussion)

This format is well-suited for the dissemination of new/updated information relating to the field of Street Medicine, review of clinically-pertinent innovations and best practices, and reporting of outcomes data from field research or interventions. Research-oriented submissions may be work-in-progress. Encouraged topic areas include, but are not limited to:

Socio-environmental determinants of health (environmental threats, health care access, housing access, community building, advocacy)

Morbidity, mortality, and vulnerability assessment

Acute disease diagnosis and management

Chronic disease management and quality of care measures

Integrated management of common complicating co-morbidities (mental illness, substance abuse/addiction, and traumatic brain injury)

Comprehensive primary care and outreach models that foster continuity and coordination of care across the spectrum of homelessness (streets, shelter, hospital, respite, housing)

B. Workshop (60 min. interactive, small-group presentation)

This format is well-suited for the sharing of practical knowledge, skills, and personal/professional/organizational enrichment strategies by presenters with particular expertise in any of these or other relevant topic areas:

Creative patient engagement and motivational strategies designed to reduce barriers and enhance care access for the most marginalized individuals, especially those suffering from severe mental illness, personality disorders, addiction, or deep-seeded distrust

Medical education and training approaches related to homelessness, including curriculum development and implementation, educational resource networking, and faculty mentoring of student-led organizations

Initiating and nurturing relationships between service organizations and local hospitals, academic medical centers, and educational institutions

Creating effective inter-agency and inter-disciplinary collaboration with respect to service, advocacy, and consumer involvement

Fundraising approaches, skills, and resources relevant to Street Medicine practices

Maintaining care access and quality during times of financial and/or political constraint

Ethical challenges commonly encountered in providing care to unsheltered homeless populations

Prevention of burn-out among clinicians and service agency staff

C. Poster (scientific poster format with dedicated viewing time)

This format is well-suited for clinical vignettes, highlighting program development/updates, description of service models, or exhibition of medical education approaches to service learning and outreach. Students and student organizations are particularly encouraged to submit in this format category, though non-students are also welcome to submit poster presentation proposals. (Students are not limited to this format category and may submit in a different category if more appropriate). Depending upon scheduling constraints, there may be an opportunity for selected posters to be presented orally as well.

All proposals submitted will be reviewed and judged by a panel that includes members of the Symposium Committee and other invited experts. Reviewers will evaluate proposals for presentation based upon the following three criteria:

1. Specific written learning objectives (active voice preferred)

2. A maximum 500-word abstract describing the presentation content, approach, and intended format (lecture, workshop, or poster). Abstracts will be judged relative to achievement of the following goals:

a) Target Audience – How appropriate is the topic for an audience of clinicians, outreach workers, service agency representatives, and community stakeholders dedicated to improving the health and well-being of unsheltered homeless populations?

b) Innovation – How novel is the information or approach in addressing a problem related to the health care of unsheltered homeless populations?

c) Impact – How potentially beneficial are the findings, interventions, or programs to the care of patients/clients, development of services, training of providers, or sustainability of programs?

d) Applicability – How accessible and generalizable are the findings, interventions, or programs to other practice sites around the world?

e) Knowledge Advancement – How valuable is the information or approach to the growing body of Street Medicine knowledge and clinical expertise? Have data/findings been collected, analyzed, and presented in a rigorous and scholarly way?

f)  Mission Advancement – How substantially does the information or approach promote/advance the values and vision of the Street Medicine Institute and International Street Medicine Symposium?

3. Adherence to submission guidelines:

a) Submissions must include current title, degree(s), and institutional/organizational affiliation and role for all presenters. A brief bio-sketch of presenters is welcome if available. The primary presenter should be listed first, followed by any co-presenters if applicable.

b) Submissions must include contact information for the primary presenter including e-mail, phone, and mailing address.

c) Submissions must be in Word document or PDF format.

d) Submissions must be e-mailed to pperri21@gmail.com.

e) Submissions must be received by 12:00 am EST on May 31, 2013.

For lecture or workshop proposals selected for presentation, the primary presenter will receive a stipend of up to $750.00 (US) to help defray (documented) travel and lodging expenses incurred by that presenter only. For student poster proposals selected for presentation, the primary student presenter will be eligible for a limited number of travel/lodging stipends of up to $600.00 (US). In addition, for each proposal accepted for presentation regardless of format category, the primary presenter and one co-presenter (if applicable) will be exempted from any relevant registration fees. Submitters will be notified of the review committee’s decision on or before June 7, 2013. Questions about the Symposium or proposal submission process can be addressed to the committee chair at pperri21@gmail.com.

Call for Papers: Altered Consciousness in Relation to Popular Culture

16-17 November 2013 Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom

Closing date for submissions: 14 June 2013

This meeting will explore the theme of altered consciousness in relation to popular culture, psychology, philosophy, religion, medicine and literature during the period 1918-1980.

Many literary and popular authors and performers during the mid twentieth century represented altered states of consciousness in their work, responding to and participating in research relating to such topics as interplanetary contact, ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy, mind-altering drugs, psychic therapies, spiritualisms, shamanism, erotics, conversion, revivals, somnambulism, precognition, distraction, group mind, multiple personality, hypnotism, lucid dreaming, Vedanta, hysteria and automatism.

What was the continuing legacy of nineteenth-century approaches to mind and spirit? How did work at the fringes of psychiatry and psychology intersect with mind sciences that consolidated their authority during the mid-twentieth century? What are the key interactions between European, North American and non-Western sources? How did investigations cross the borders between arts, sciences, religion, education and the military?

Priority will be given to submissions that show potential for sparking discussion across disciplinary boundaries, and are accessible to a non-specialist audience.

We are especially keen to hear from women contributors, and those whose work extends beyond British and North American contexts.

Please send a talk summary of approx 300 words and author bio of approx 50 words to: altconsc@qmul.ac.uk by 14 June 2013.

Speakers accepted onto the programme will have 20 minutes to speak.

This event is generously supported by: the British Society for the History of Science, and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Centre for the History of the Emotions, and the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, University of London.

Call for Workshop Presentations: Meanings of Madness: Critical and Creative Perspectives

Catherine Mcauley School Of Nursing And Midwifery and School Of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland in association with Critical Voices Network Ireland

13 And 14 November 2013, University College Cork, Ireland

Madness is a word that continues to invite controversy, with some perceiving it to be a derogatory term, others perceiving it as a celebration of human creativity and diversity, whilst others position themselves somewhere in the middle. This year’s conference, now in its 5th year, aims to explore these various positions by focusing on critical perspectives on the meaning of madness as a human experience and on creative responses to such an experience.

The conference offers opportunities to consider:

• Meanings of madness 

• Broadening understandings of expressions of madness

• creative approaches to engaging with and responding to madness 

Call for Oral Presentations/Workshops (45 minutes’ duration): Please submit an abstract (in Word - 250 words max) related to the conference theme and outlining its aims and intentions by 6 September 2013. Please also submit a brief bio (in Word - 150 words max). Please email abstract and bio to l.sapouna@ucc.ie. Inquiries toh.gijbels@ucc.ie or l.sapouna@ucc.ie

The Conference organisers are Harry Gijbels, Catherine McAuley School of Nursing and Midwifery, and Lydia Sapouna, School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Ireland.

Call for Papers: From Moral Treatment to Psychological Therapies: Histories of Psychotherapeutics from the York Retreat to the Present Day

Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines, University College London, United Kingdom

11-13th October 2013

Whilst the history of psychiatry has become a well developed field of scholarship, there remain few examinations of psychotherapeutic treatments beyond histories of psychoanalytic approaches. This conference will bring together recent historical research on therapeutic treatments for mental distress and disorder, from the 18th century up to the present. It seeks to explore how such therapies were developed, their institutional and intellectual contexts, and the debates and controversies which may surround their use. ‘Psychotherapeutics’ is defined in its broadest terms, and is intended to include approaches that have been accepted by the medical or state establishments, as well as those practiced outside official institutional settings. Such modes of therapy could include moral treatment, mesmerism, mental healing, ‘talking’ therapies with a wide variety of theoretical bases, from psychoanalysis to cognitive therapy, as well as professional interventions such as those from psychiatric nursing, mental health social work, occupational therapy, play therapy and art therapy.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• The philosophical basis of therapies, such as existential, gestalt or behavioural approaches etc.

• Connections between the generation of therapeutic methods and their orginators’ biographies.

• Institutional, economic and political influences on the development of therapeutic practice.

• Psychotherapeutics in the health services.

• The professionalization and regulation of psychotherapeutic practice.

• The relationship between psychotherapeutic methods and other fields of knowledge, e.g. pedagogy, criminology, the neurosciences etc.

• Debates and controversies about psychotherapeutic approaches.

• The development of specific approaches for different age groups.

• Psychotherapeutic concepts in popular culture and the media.

Abstracts of up to 500 words for 20 minute papers should be sent to Sarah Marks at sarah.marks@ucl.ac.uk. Proposals for themed panels with a maximum of four participants are also welcome. The deadline for individual papers and panel proposals is the 10th June 2013. Participants will be notified whether their papers have been accepted by 20th June 2013.

Call for Papers: Bias in Health Data

Autumn Conference of the Section
Sociology of Medicine and Health of the
German Sociological Association
03/04 October 2013
European University Institute, Florence, Italy

Public health research is based mainly on two different types of data: register data and survey data. Cases recorded in register data (such as hospital or insurance data) are the result of a selection process with several biases. For example, hospital data undergo several selection stages beginning with the definition of a mental or physical state such as being ill or dysfunctional, the decision to use medical care, the subsequent diagnosis by a physician and the decision for or against a particular treatment and finally the choice for stationary versus ambulant treatment. Independently of medical or health issues, social mechanisms also bias the filtering process at each stage. This fact is of minor concern when using hospital data to describe the population of a hospital, however, the problems begin when data are used to estimate the prevalence of diseases depending, for instance, on gender, social class, or age:

Gender is correlated with sensitivity to symptoms and the means of accessing medical care, while social class influences the conditions of health insurance and therefore also the cost of a particular treatment; older people are more likely to choose inpatient treatment since they may not be able to cope with the situation at home, which is also relevant for hospital data.

Survey data in health research is often based on answers from respondents who are medical laypeople. Respondents may systematically over- or underestimate the occurrence of a particular disease, i.e. the statistical error (false positive, false negative) is systematically biased by the respondents ́ degree of health knowledge and sensitivity to symptoms, which in turn depends on the educational background, gender and so on. Educational background is highly correlated with the degree of health knowledge, which is needed to identify a physical or mental state as “disease”. The more complex the symptoms (as with mental diseases, for example), the more health knowledge is needed in order to classify the symptoms as being connected with a disease or condition.

The conference should shed more light on these social mechanisms creating systematic biases in health data. Presentations could focus on the following theoretical, empirical or methodological issues:

Which data type (register versus survey data) is affected by which biases?

Which systematic biases in register data occur due to systematic differences in...

... access and usage of medical care?

... physicians ́ diagnoses?

... the decision for and against medical treatment?

... the decision for ambulant versus stationary treatment?

How is survey data biased by determinants such as health knowledge?

Regarding known biases of survey methodology: What is special about health data?



We have a number of preferences within the topic of "bias in health data": First, we are especially interested in presentations focusing on bias es in measures of health. Biases in other data (e.g. prevalence of risk factors or socioeconomic status) are also relevant and presentations dealing with such related topics will also be considered. Second, we are mostly interested in biases that pertain to data used in health research and less in general biases already well-known from general survey methodology. Finally, we focus more on biases based on social mechanisms (e.g. due to different perceptions of health in different social groups) than e.g. on the technical problem of moving from one version of the International Classification of Diseases to the next.

We will also provide an extra time slot for presentations that deal with other topics of sociology of medicine and health.

Please submit your abstract (about one page) via email to rasmus.hoffmann@eui.eu and cgross@soziologie.uni-kiel.de by
31 May 2013. Letters of acceptance/rejection will be sent by 21 June 2013.

A small conference fee will be charged to cover two meals, coffee, water and snacks. More detailed information about the location, conference schedule and accommodation options will be provided by the end of June. The best presentations will be selected and presenters will be invited to submit a full paper after the conference to be published in a special issue volume of an international health journal edited by Christiane Gross and Rasmus Hoffmann.

Organization:

Rasmus Hoffmann (European University Institute/Erasmus Medical Center)

Christiane Gross (University of Kiel)

Request for Proposals: Yale Food Systems Symposium

Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut October 18-19, 2013

The parallel forces of urbanization and globalization are transforming our planet. They are bringing unprecedented changes to food production and distribution, livelihoods, communities, and the environment. While the pace of this transformation presents significant challenges to the creation of just and sustainable food systems, it may also create powerful opportunities: to support ecological stewardship, promote economic sustainability, cultivate human health, and ensure social justice. Currently, divergent food system paradigms compete for validity. How can these diverse perspectives be negotiated? How can we synchronize the efforts of research, policy, and practice?

The Yale Food Systems Symposium will bring emerging and established scholars and practitioners to work together in action-oriented sessions that address the complex ecological and socio-economic processes of food production, consumption, climate change and rapid urbanization. A variety of session formats will encourage transdisciplinary dialogue and an active exchange of ideas. We seek a diversity of proposal formats: panels, working groups, roundtables, poster presentations, and papers. We welcome perspectives from the natural and social sciences, from applied disciplines, and from community practitioners. Proposals that bring scholars and practitioners together, work across disciplines, or partner emerging and established researchers are especially encouraged.

Topic areas include, but are not limited to:

Climate change and the food system

Urbanization, land use change, and food systems planning

Politics, policies, and governance across scales

Agricultural biodiversity and issues of genetic property

Sustainable intensification, multi-functional agriculture

Urban-rural linkages

Public and market-based approaches to regulating the food system

Alternative food networks

The right to food, food justice, and food sovereignty movements

Industrial ecology approaches to food systems analysis

Sustainable diets and assessing and forecasting nutrition trends

Sustainable supply chains

University-community partnerships

Research methods, participatory practice, and frameworks for collaboration

Deadline for submission is July 1st, 2013. Abstracts & Workshop Proposals should be 150-200 words and include a title and keywords. Please submit online using our abstract submission form. Accepted proposals will be notified by August 15, 2013.

Questions about proposal submission and registration may be directed to yalefoodsymposium@gmail.com.

Call for Papers: Shakespeare and Natural History

As a part of the Shakespeare 450 conference in Paris from April 21 to 27, 2014, this panel seeks to extend our understanding of how Shakespeare’s time was teeming with the new practice that would come to be known as natural history. Today, 450 years after Shakespeare’s birth, we are the beneficiaries of more than just the poetry of the era. Shakespeare’s recognition of and interaction with the community of natural historians demonstrates the importance he and others of his time placed on this new field. At the same time we honor the legacy of his literary engagement, so too can we consider the impact that his generation had on the imminent scientific revolution and the interaction among science, literature and society that would follow.

For this panel, I am seeking a multidisciplinary group of Shakespeare scholars, Renaissance literature experts, historians of science, and classicists to engage the theme of Shakespeare and science along broad lines. For instance:

1. What echoes or foreshadowings of the new natural history are found in Shakespeare’s work? What classical or contemporary scientific texts are particularly important for Shakespeare scholars? Which plays, poems, or even characters lead themselves to our greater understanding of the discipline?

2. How do Shakespeare’s gestures toward a natural history differ from the way the practice develops? In particular, what does the way he engaged with sources tell us about the practitioners of and assumptions about early modern science? To what extent is Shakespeare supporting this new discipline? Is it fair to call Shakespeare a natural historian? A popularizer of science?

3. In what way do the communities that Shakespeare depicts reflect the mobility exploited by natural historians or provide contrasting examples from earlier times? Can a better knowledge of particular fields, such Renaissance findings in botany/zoology, anatomy/medicine/pharmacology, astronomy/alchemy, or geology/geography/cartography, provide us with a richer understanding of Shakespeare’s work? Which key figures or texts from these disciplines should be as well known as Plutarch’s Lives or Holinshed’s Chronicles to Shakespeare scholars?

4. How can the evidence of natural history in Shakespeare help us better understand the interaction between science and literature in general? Does it offer us evidence of the social construction of scientific knowledge?

Proposals for papers that address these or related topics are welcome. Proposers are encouraged to review the relevant articles in the Winter and Spring 2009 issue of South Central Review, in addition to the bibliographic notes about the contributors in Carla Mazzio’s editorial introduction to the special edition, before submitting. Send name, email, affiliation, abstract (250 words) and title of your contribution with a brief CV to Chris Leslie by email (cleslie@poly.edu) by August 1, 2013. Participants in this panel will precirculate draft papers with each other by April 7, 2014 to ensure a lively discussion at the conference.

This conference is organized by The Société française Shakespeare and will take place in a variety of venues in the center of Paris. For more information visit the Shakespeare Anniversary website: http://www.shakespeareanniversary.org/?-Shakespeare-450

Call for Papers: Risk, Perception, and Response Conference

March 20-21, 2014 Harvard School of Public Health Boston, Massachusetts

Abstracts Due: June 10, 2013

Registration Opens: December 2013

How people react to scientific evidence of risk is mediated by many factors, including how risk information is perceived and communicated, how we react to social and cultural influences, and how choices are structured. Examples abound of situations where individuals’ risk perceptions lead them to act in ways that appear contrary to their own interests, overreacting to or neglecting risks. How can situations in which individuals are likely to respond poorly be identified, and what can be done to improve their responses? To increase our understanding of the factors that contribute to these behaviors and to develop better options for fostering sound decisions, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis is commissioning papers for presentation at a March 20-21, 2014 conference and subsequent publication.

Limited attention, emotional reactions, and difficulties in processing risk-related information, among other factors, may lead individuals to act in ways that impair their health or welfare. For example, warnings about mercury in fish can lead people to decrease their overall fish consumption and hence their consumption of healthful omega-3 fatty acids. Concerns about autism can lead to vaccine avoidance, increasing the individual’s risk of disease and the risk of transmission to others. Such behaviors may result from incomplete, inaccurate, or ineffective risk communication, or may occur even if the risk is well-communicated. Choice architecture, popularized by Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge, also affects behavior. To promote welfare-enhancing decisions, better understanding of these causal factors is needed, together with innovative approaches for overcoming them.

The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis is soliciting papers to explore these issues and develop methods for effectively addressing them. Papers may be theoretically or empirically oriented; case studies are encouraged but not required. Examples of topics that may be addressed include the following.

How can we identify and assess cases where reactions to risk have led, or are likely to lead, to harmful behaviors, from an ex post or ex ante perspective?

What factors affect the likelihood and severity of these adverse outcomes? To what extent are they attributable to the nature of the risk, the characteristics of the affected population, cognitive or affective responses, social or cultural considerations, or other factors?

How can we intervene to prevent such adverse reactions? What are the implications for risk communication, choice architecture, government policies, or other actions?

For each accepted paper, HCRA will cover travel expenses (including airfare, hotel, and other expenses) of up to $1,000 for one presenter. In addition, we will pay a $3,000 honorarium. The first $1,000 will be provided upon receipt of a complete draft of the paper, due no later than January 31, 2014. The remaining $2,000 will be provided when the final manuscript is submitted for publication. Authors will have the option of submitting their paper for peer-reviewed publication as part of a special series focused on the results of the conference.

Submissions must be provided as PDFs, and must include the following information:

Title (70 characters maximum).

Complete list of authors and institutional affiliations.

Full contact information for the presenter (email, postal address, and phone number).

All correspondence will be directed to this individual.

A statement certifying that the research represents new work that will not be submitted for publication prior to the conference.

A summary of the proposed research, no longer than 1,000 words, that clearly:

indicates the relationship of the research to the goals and objectives of this project; and,

describes the issues to be addressed by the research and how it will be conducted.

A bibliography including no more than 15 references.

Submissions that do not adhere to these requirements will not be considered.

Submissions must be emailed to riskperception@hsph.harvard.edu and received no later than June 10, 2013.

Completed papers must be submitted to the conference organizers no later than January 31, 2014.

Submission of an abstract is viewed as a commitment to complete the work, adhere to the schedule noted above, and attend the conference if selected.

Decisions will be provided no later than September 10, 2013.

Call for Papers: Victorian Body Parts

St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum, Clerkenwell, United Kingdom Saturday 14th September 2013

The Victorian Body Parts Conference is an interdisciplinary event for postgraduate and early career researchers, and will be held on Saturday 14th September 2013 at St Bart’s Pathology Museum, Clerkenwell.

It is supported by the British Association for Victorian Studies and the Birkbeck Centre for 19th Century Studies.

The conference is being organised by Beatrice Bazell and Emma Curry, both in their 2nd year of PhD research at Birkbeck, working on representations of body parts in Victorian culture.

Why were the Victorians so interested in atomizing the body? What was causing nineteenth-century bodies to come apart at the seams? From articulated bones to beating hearts, from wooden legs to hair bracelets, from death masks to glass eyes, the Victorian body was chattering with its own discorporation.

The results of this fragmentation are successors to the recent scholarly work on material culture in examining the atomisation of the body as a symptom of being surrounded by the commodities generated by the nineteenth century. From objects under glass domes to pieces of the body in glass cases (authentic specimens of which fill St Bartholomew’s Pathology Museum), commodification and dissection have much in common.

This conference thus seeks to explore, develop and enrich perspectives on the numerous and varied ways in which the Victorians approached their anatomy, bringing together postgraduate, early career and established researchers to consider why body parts provided such an urgent and stimulating focus within the nineteenth-century cultural imagination.

Possible topics could include, but are by no means limited to:

§ Mementos of the body and the culture of mourning

§ Disability and the “substitution” of the body part

§ Dress and the exaggeration of, or emphasis on, elements of the body

§ Darwin and bodily means of expression in science

§ The“queering” of the body part

§ Measuring the body: deviation from the standards of Western patriarchy

§ Preserving the body: collecting and museum cultures

Proposals of up to 300 words should be sent to victorianbodyparts@gmail.com by Friday 31st May 2013.

Blog:victorianbodyparts.wordpress.com                        

Twitter: @victbodyparts

Call for Presentations: 1st Global Conference on Suicide, Self-Harm and Assisted Dying

Monday 4th November 2013 – Wednesday 6th November 2013 Athens, Greece

This conference brings together discussion of research and practice in three complex areas – Suicide, Self-Harm and Assisted Dying.

Over one million people worldwide die from suicide each year. The incidence of completed suicide is very much higher in males than females, for all age groups and in most societies where recording occurs. A notable exception is China where female suicides equal or exceed male rates.

Risk factors highlighted in research into suicide have included poverty, abuse, gender, age, masculinity, sexuality, mental illness, situational trauma, substance misuse, homelessness, unemployment and other adverse life events. Completed suicides leave in their wake a long-lasting trail of guilt, shame and pain.

Self-harm is a direct and deliberate physically damaging form of bodily harm which may or may not be intentionally life-threatening. It is often repetitive in nature and usually socially unacceptable.

Self-harm is a risk factor in subsequent attempted suicide. Patients who deliberately harm themselves have a risk of suicide some 100 times greater than that of the general population. However it may occur as an event or pattern of behaviour with no relation to suicidal intent. The UK is estimated to have one of the highest rates of deliberate self-harm in Europe, at 400 per 100,000 population (Self-poisoning and self-injury in adults, Clinical Medicine, 2002). It is hard, however, to arrive at definitive rates since self-harm is often practised secretly. Like suicide, it carries considerable stigma.

Assisted dying or assisted suicide describes the set of actions by which an individual helps another person voluntarily to bring about his or her own death. This is a separate issue from euthanasia, which is not a topic within the remit of this Call for Papers. Assistance may include the provision of means, such as drugs, or other actions. There is currently intense public debate globally about a person’s right to achieve death in this way, with complex legal, religious, cultural, ethical and practical issues involved. Assisted suicide is legal in several jurisdictions, including Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and some American states.

Societal responses to suicide have ranged right across the spectrum, from encouragement or acceptance to outright criminalisation of the act. Suicide, assisting suicide and attempting suicide have historically been considered crimes in many societies, often because of prevailing religious doctrines, and yet some cultures and sub-cultures have advocated suicide. Currently there are on-line sites that encourage or facilitate it. There is a wide range of counselling and other therapeutic interventions and treatments associated with suicidal and self-harming states of mind, and these therapeutic approaches are also used to help deal with the painful aftermath of a completed suicide. Art and music therapies have been used to help sufferers deal with suicidal states of mind. Suicide and self-destruction have been fertile grounds for literature and art, producing a rich and poignant body of creative work.

In England and Wales, to focus on one jurisdiction only, suicide itself was decriminalised as recently as 1961. Assisting suicide, however, remains a crime. There is pressure to change the law following some test cases, so as to permit assisted dying. This presents modern medicine, law and ethics with particular complexities since it runs counter to several core principles in those bodies of knowledge and practice.

We welcome abstracts on any of the topics of Suicide, Self-Harm or Assisted Dying from the fields of medicine, psychiatry, nursing, social work, counselling, psychotherapy, philosophy, ethics, psychology, sociology, history, cultural studies, history, law, creative writing, music, art and literature.

The Steering Group particularly welcomes the submission of pre-formed panel proposals. Papers  and presentations will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts or presentation proposals should be submitted by Friday 14th June 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper, if appropriate, should be submitted by Friday 13th September 2013.

What to Send:

300 word abstracts or presentation proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract.
E-mails should be entitled: SSA1 Abstract Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chair

Diana Medlicott: diana@inter-disciplinary.net

Rob Fisher: ssa1@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Probing the Boundaries programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.