Health Humanities Consortium Conference 2025

The Health Humanities Consortium invites proposals for its annual conference on the theme of Healing Institutions.

Our theme highlights the complex and often ambivalent role of institutions—from hospitals and universities to established organizations, customs, laws, practices and people—in health and healthcare. Inviting consideration of institutions as agents of care, the theme also acknowledges their role in exclusion, extraction and injustice. How do institutions function as mediators of health and healing? When institutions have enabled harm, what forms of redress can be brought to bear? How can we reimagine and actualize the institutional change needed to face urgent challenges to health across individual, collective and planetary scales?   

Since the 1960s, the prevailing biomedical definition of health—an understanding of wellness and illness framed in terms of physical disease and its presence or absence—has been called into question. Broader definitions acknowledge the entanglements of body, psyche and society, emphasizing social, structural and cultural drivers of health including marginalization. Current understandings of health consider how social forces materialize in physical and physiological forms across objects, technology, institutions and embodiment. With the conference theme as a springboard and provocation, we invite presentations that explore and rethink issues such as:  

• Key institutions of health and healthcare, from hospitals, insurers and universities to established organizations, customs, laws, practices and people.
• Rhetorics and practices of institutional repair and redress, particularly regarding histories of legally- and socially-sanctioned medical discrimination. 
• Boundaries and borders that mediate institutions, communities and the body.
• Community responses and resistance to institutional power.
• Underrepresented patient, caregiver, worker and learner/trainee voices in health and healthcare.
• Self-institutionalizing projects such as alternative schools and clinics.
• Curricular innovations and reform in health professions education. 
• The Philadelphia community’s historic roots in medicine and the arts and present-day efforts to achieve health equity.

Panels, papers and creative presentations that engage the conference theme are encouraged, but proposals which contribute to the broader project of the health humanities are equally welcome. 

Conference Format

The conference will begin with a plenary session and opening reception on the evening of Wednesday, April 2. Presentations will be grouped into 75-minute concurrent sessions on Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday and Friday, and Saturday morning. The conference will conclude by 2 p.m. on Saturday. Most concurrent sessions will be hybrid with in-person and virtual presentation options, except for a small number of virtual-only sessions. 

Submission Guidelines

We seek proposals in the form of 250-word (maximum) abstracts for flash presentations, individual presentations, and workshops. Complete panels and roundtables should be submitted as a 750-word (maximum) summary of the session that includes an overview of the session and individual descriptions of each participant’s presentation. An individual may submit and/or participate in no more than two proposals/sessions. All presenters must register for the conference. (See below for registration fees.)

Presentation Formats

Flash presentations. Individual presenters will have five minutes (timed) to present content not previously published. We expect to group seven flash presentations into one 75-minute session, leaving brief time for Q&A. 

Individual presentations. Individual presenters will have 15 minutes (timed) to present content not previously published. Content may take the form of a paper representing research and/or scholarly work or creative work such as art presentations, readings of creative writing, etc. We expect to organize presentations into groups of three based on common themes. Three presentations will constitute one 75-minute session, with up to 30 minutes total allotted for Q&A.

Complete panels. Complete panels should consist of three to four presenters addressing a focused theme from diverse perspectives. The panel convenor should submit the proposal and will moderate and facilitate discussion among panelists and with audience members; this individual may also be one of the panel presenters. Complete panels will be allotted one 75-minute slot, with up to 30 minutes total allotted for Q&A.

Roundtables. Roundtable sessions may contain up to eight participants, including the convener, and should address questions of broad interest within the health humanities. The format should emphasize engagement between panelists and attendees. Roundtables will be allotted one 75-minute slot, with up to 30 minutes total allotted for Q&A. 

Workshops. The primary aim of a workshop is to provide instructional content in an interactive manner. The number of presenters is dependent on the nature of the workshop. Please note in your proposal how you plan to engage both in-person and virtual participants. Workshops will be allotted a 75-minute slot. 

Accessibility. The conference organizers will create and encourage accessibility in all of the conference spaces and modalities. For more information, contact humanities@jefferson.edu.

Conference registration is expected to open in October. 

Current HHC Members

In-person Registration 
Individual - $275 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $150
Student/trainee - $100

Virtual-only Registration 
Individual - $125 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $75
Student/trainee - $50

Non-HHC Members 

In-person Registration 
Individual - $325 
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $200
Student/trainee - $150

Virtual-only Registration 
Individual - $175
Contingent faculty, independent scholar or registrants with self-identified financial need - $125
Student/trainee - $100