The project will organize three workshops devoted to the following themes:
1st workshop: Theorizing contestation of health and wellbeing: State of the art and how to move forward? 20-21 January 2022, University of Turku, Finland
This workshop will be devoted to discussing different ways of theorizing the controversies around notions of health and wellbeing. It will address, for example, different understandings of expertise and evidence as well as the political and ethical questions related to them. It will identify the central theoretical frameworks in different disciplines and assess their explanatory power as well as locate questions that have remained under-theorized. This workshop seeks to animate the theoretical imagination of the participants and encourage novel ways of theorizing the phenomenon through interdisciplinary dialogue.
Keynote speakers include Dr. Jaana Parviainen (University of Tampere) and Professor Ayo Wahlberg (University of Copenhagen).
Call for papers for this workshop is closed.
2nd workshop: How to study contestation of health and wellbeing? Methodological and epistemological approaches
tbc, Umeå University
This workshop will examine epistemological and methodological questions related to the contestation of health and wellbeing. It discusses the different research materials and methods that have been employed in empirical research and identifies their strengths and limitations. It addresses, for example, ethnography, narrative analysis, artistic research, media analysis, survey and mixed methods. It also discusses questions of positionality, reflexivity and the researcher-researched relationship as well as ethical questions in the research process. The workshop seeks to open up new methodological avenues and facilitate the creative combining of different research methods and materials.
3rd workshop: Politics of health and wellbeing
tbc, University of Oslo
This workshop addresses the political dimensions and implications related to the contestation of notions of health and wellbeing. It will trace processes of politicisation and depoliticisation of evidence, expertise and authority and outline common patterns and differences between the Nordic countries. It will investigate new forms of political activism around health and wellbeing and the legal regulation of CAM treatments and vaccine refusal in the Nordic countries. The methodological and theoretical insights drawn from the previous workshops are used to stimulate questions for this workshop.