Keynote speaker announcement

IHA annual conference 2026

The South East Technological University (SETU) and the IHA are delighted to announce Prof. Des Fitzgerald (UCC) and Dr Jess Manion (ATU) as keynote speakers at the annual IHA conference - Un/Silencing Healthcare: Voices, Power and Imagination - which will take place on 3rd and 4th September 2026 at SETU campus Waterford.

Des Fitzgerald is Professor of Medical Humanities and Social Sciences at UCC, based in the Radical Humanities Laboratory, and in the Department of Sociology & Criminology. His research interests lie broadly in the historical sociology of the brain and mind sciences; two most recent books are 'The Urban Brain' (with Nikolas Rose, Princeton University Press, 2023) and 'The City of Today is a Dying Thing' (Faber & Faber, 2024). His current book project, 'Birth Weight' is a set of personal essays on the themes of reproduction, self-harm, and memory, to be published by Faber & Faber in 2027. A graduate of University College Cork (BA), the University of Cambridge (MPhil) and the London School of Economics (PhD). Des won the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Sociology in 2017, and his work has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust, the Volkswagen Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) among others.

Jess Mannion lectures at the Atlantic Technological University, Sligo. She is  Principal Investigator of the Irish team on the 'Disabilities Without Borders' project alongside her colleague Dr Lori B. Vincent at the University of Cincinnati. The team comprises researchers with intellectual disabilities and neurodivergence, interdisciplinary academics, artists and practitioners. The research utilises a variety of visual and creative research methods, including art, drawing, participant poetry, rap, creative performance, joint sandboxing, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, third objects, film, and comic zines to collect and disseminate data. Jess is a Research Associate on the NIHR-funded 'Belonging and Difference for People with Learning Disabilities' project at Lancaster University and a Research Counsellor on the ATU Sligo team of the Interreg Europe TechSocialCare 'Promoting Technical Standards for Assistive Technology in European Social Care Services' project.