Social Science meetings & conferences

International Street Medicine Symposium IX

October 24-26, 2013 Boston, Massachusetts

The Street Medicine Institute is excited to announce the 9th annual International Street Medicine Symposium, to be held in historic Boston, Massachusetts on October 24-26, 2013, with a special pre-symposium “Street Medicine 101” workshop on October 23rd for interested participants. The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, widely regarded as one of the world’s largest and most effective homeless health care programs, has generously agreed to serve as a local sponsoring organization.

Learning Activities

The International Street Medicine Symposium is the world’s premiere educational event dedicated to the health care of unsheltered or “rough-sleeping” homeless populations. As always, the Symposium will offer a slate of homeless health care experts from around the globe presenting clinical topics, innovations, research outcomes, and best practices relevant to Street Medicine. The popular format mix of large-group lectures, small-group workshops, and poster presentations will be back again after positive reviews from last year’s Symposium. Additionally, there will be ample exposure to the talented clinicians and administrative staff of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program with scheduled site visits to the program’s renowned clinical facilities, including the Barbara McInnis House medical respite program. We hope to offer CME credits for eligible clinicians again this year.

Host City Spotlight

Street Medicine clinicians and administrators from around the world have long regarded the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program as a leader of the Street Medicine movement; many of the field’s most important research outcomes and clinical innovations have come from the talented clinicians and staff at BHCHP. The program’s extensive network of clinical services across the spectrum of homelessness and seamless integration into Boston’s world-class academic mental centers and health sciences educational institutions stands as an international model for comprehensive, continuous, and high-quality health care programming for persons experiencing homelessness.

In addition to its status as a homeless health care hub, Boston was chosen to host this year’s Symposium for its unrivaled combination of metropolitan beauty, history, international accessibility, and diversity. And there is no better time to visit Boston than late October, when the New England fall foliage season is at its spectacular peak!

Reconnect and Re-energize

As consistently reported by past participants, one of the most valuable experiences of the Symposium is the opportunity to interact with Street Medicine colleagues from across the country and around the world. Again this year, program activities will incorporate time to reconnect with old friends, make new contacts, and share stories of the triumphs and challenges of this important work. Participants will be inspired and re-energized as they renew a common commitment to improving the lives of their brothers and sisters living on the streets.

Altered Consciousness in Relation to Popular Culture

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

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?

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.
 

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

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.

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.

34th Anthropology and Health Conference

Anthropology and Personalised Medicine: Impacting the Future of Comprehensive Healthcare

8th-12th September 2013, Inter University Centre, Don Frana Bulića 4, 20 000 Dubrovnik, Croatia

Objectives:

1. To delineate anthropological perspectives on biological constructs of diversity such as “race” and their historical and current impact on the development and practice of personalized medicine.

2. To delineate anthropological sociocultural constructs of diversity such as racism and ethnocentrism, bioethics, health equity and disparities and their historical and current impact on the development and practice of personalized medicine.

3. To examine anthropological contributions to the molecular genetic, population genetic and epigenetic foundations of personalized medicine using Croatian populations as an exemplar.

4. Through the dual lenses of medicine and anthropology discuss new developments and projected epidemiological impact of personalized medicine on metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancers, forensic sciences, and other diseases and conditions.

5.To develop a comprehensive approach to the dissemination, tracking and assessment of the impact of the conference using the Becker Model.

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.

Questions may be directed to yalefoodsymposium@gmail.com.

Classifying Sex: Debating DSM-5

Thursday, 4 July 2013 to Friday, 5 July 2013 Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

This conference brings together social and political scientists, feminist scholars, sexologists, psychiatrists, historians of science, as well as mental health practitioners and sexual rights activists to critically explore the sexual classifications produced by the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published in May 2013. The DSM is the standard reference for the classification of mental disorders, and its first major revision since 1994 is consequently an important global event. The conference will explore which categories of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, ‘healthy’ and ‘pathological’ sexualities and identities the new manual produces, and critically scrutinise their consequences for diagnostic practices as well as their wider social and political implications. The conference will take place on 4 and 5 July 2013 at the interdisciplinary Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge. It is financially supported by CRASSH, the Wellcome Trust, the Sexual Divisions Study Group of the British Sociological Association, the French Institute, Northumbria University, the Laboratoire de Sociologie of the University of Lausanne, and The Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES).

Implications of the Affordable Care Act for Low Income Individuals and Families

November 1-2, 2013 Davis, California

The full implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) over the coming years will bring many changes in the level of and process for access to health care among poor and working class Americans.  In November 2013, the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis will host an interdisciplinary conference focusing on research that provides insight and background into likely effects of the ACA on low income individuals and their families.

Risk, Perception, and Response Conference

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

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.

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