Transitions: perspectives on changing planetary and care frontiers

Medical Anthropology Europe (MAE) Conference 2027

Call for open panels

In times of intensifying climate change, deepening inequality, persistent inequities, and ongoing conflict, questions of what it means to care, and how care is organised, sustained, and experienced, have become increasingly urgent. The MAE Conference 2027 is an international hybrid conference that will examine contemporary notions of transition across environmental, digital, and social fields. 

The conference will explore how changing planetary and care frontiers generate new forms of dependency, responsibility, concern, and obligation among people, more-than-humans, and technologies. We are interested in the vulnerable and affective relations that emerge through social, environmental, technological, and political transformations, and in how transitions reshape possibilities for care, wellbeing, and collective life. How can medical anthropology engage with different disciplines and partners in addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time, including unequal access to healthcare, evolving models of care provision, rising care needs, uneven life conditions, and increasing exposure to environmental degradation and extreme weather? By bringing together scholars and practitioners working across diverse contexts, the conference seeks to explore how transitions are lived, governed, contested, and cared for at the shifting frontiers of planetary and social life. 

The organising committee invites open panel suggestions that engage with the conference theme and medical anthropology more broadly. Open panel proposals should include: 1) Proposed open panel title; 2) Names and affiliations of open panel organisers; 3) Open panel abstract (max. 600 words). You may submit your open panel here: [LINK for uploading open panel proposals will soon appear here] 

Key dates for the MAE 2027 conference 

  • 3 November 2026: Call for open panels
  • 10 December 2026: Deadline for open panel proposals
  • 29 January 2027: Decision on open panels
  • 12 February 2027: Call for papers
  • 26 March 2027: Deadline for paper proposals
  • 30 April 2027: Notification of acceptance
  • May-June 2027: Early bird rates
  • 1 July 2027: Final Registration deadline
  • 17-20 August 2027: MAE Conference (programme begins Tuesday afternoon, ends Friday afternoon)

In case of questions do contact the organizing committee by mail: mae2027.copenhagen@gmail.com