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.
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.