EXTENSION Call for Papers (16 April) - IHA annual conference

Un/Silencing Healthcare: Voices, Power and Imagination

IRISH HUMANITIES ALLIANCE CONFERENCE 2026
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

We invite submissions for a two-day interdisciplinary conference on the theme of Un/Silencing Healthcare: Voices, Power and Imagination, hosted at South East Technological University (SETU) on 3rd - 4th September 2026. The event will explore how voices, bodies, and practices are heard, silenced, or transformed within medicine and healthcare. At a time of rapid technological change, growing distrust in institutions, and heightened awareness of systemic injustice, the medical and health humanities have a vital role in amplifying plural voices and reimagining care. We welcome submissions under the following thematic streams, as well as submissions outside of these areas:

1.       Voice, Power, Representation: Testimony, narrative, and silence in healthcare

2.       Disobedient Ethics: Context, care and accountability beyond compliance

3.       Cripping, Queering, Deconstructing: Disrupting dominant norms and reimagining inclusion

4.       Technology, AI & the Human: Bias, consent, and personhood

5.       Radical Imagination & Interruption: Speculative, creative, and entangled futures

The diverse conference programme will include keynote lectures, paper sessions, visual and creative works, performance/creative showcase, a postgraduate student poster competition, and a postgraduate workshop; affirming that creativity is integral to the medical and health humanities. We encourage contributors to reflect on voice, positionality, and form, recognising that healthcare is understood through many different types of knowledge. We particularly welcome submissions from PhD students, early-career researchers, creative practitioners, and under-represented voices. SETU is committed to ensuring accessibility across conference events. Submission formats can include academic papers, posters, performance or installations, roundtables, provocations, collaborative service user-practitioner presentations, and postgraduate posters.

To submit a proposal for this conference
Please provide an abstract (up to 300 words) and a short bio (75 words) as one document to the link below. Please ensure your submission includes your contact information and the proposed format of your contribution (such as individual or collaborative paper, creative work, roundtable, postgraduate poster). Please inform us if you have any accessibility needs.