Call for Papers

This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project aims to explore the processes by which we attempt to create meaning in health, illness and disease. In previous years, this interdisciplinary conference has attracted delegates from around the world, including practising clinicians, academics from a variety of disciplines, and persons involved in community-based organizations.

For its tenth anniversary, the conference will focus on the theme “Chronic Illness: The Borderlands Between Health and Illness” and we are issuing a call for papers on any aspect of chronicity.

The apparent increase in and diversity of chronic conditions calls for better understandings of the spaces between health and illness that chronic patients occupy, often for most of their lives. How can we articulate the tension between the biomedical model of chronicity and its embodied experience? What language and other forms of representation can we use to map, chart and begin to explore the meanings possible within such spaces? What insights can these provide to inform better chronic care management? What is the relationship between chronicity and wellbeing? How do individuals, societies and cultures make sense of chronicity?

We particularly welcome papers/ worshops/ short performances on topics which might include, but are not restricted to:

1. The Borderlands:
- well but ill; degrees of wellness; degrees of illness.
- chronic illness; terminal illness
- chronic pain/ acute pain
- metaphors for and of the journey

2. Understanding CI
- clinical trials/ Big Pharma and CI
- identity and sense of self
- shame, stigma and guilt
- medicine, the clinical gaze, and CI
- the relationship with our body

3. Living with CI
- CI and family
- CI and work
- CI and disability
- CI and ethnicity
- CI and gender

4. Giving CI Voices
- the language of CI
- narrating CI
- representing CI
- performing CI

5. Coping with CI
- chronic pain
- managing chronic illness/self-managing chronic illness
- life, time and reinventing meaning
- healthcare and CI
- living well

For 2011, the  Making Sense Of: Health, Illness and Disease project will meet alongside our project on Fear, Horror and Terror. It is our intention to create  cross-over sessions between the two groups – and we welcome  proposals which deal with the relationship between health, illness  and disease and fear, horror and terror.

300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 25th March 2011. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 22nd July 2011. 300 word abstracts should be submitted to the Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract
E-mails should be entitled: HID10 Abstract Submission

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Perspectives are sought from those engaged in:

• art and art therapy, creative writing, literature, history of medicine, media studies, performing arts, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology
• nursing, counseling, gerontology, health education, health services, public health care
• practitioners in health care fields – doctors, GP’s, surgeons, health care workers, care givers, hospice workers

All papers accepted for and presented at this conference will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers maybe invited for development for publication in a themed hard copy dialogic volume(s) The conference is sponsored by Inter-Disciplinary.Net as part of the ‘Probing the Boundaries’ programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting.

Style Sheets

In preparing your submissions, please make use of the following style sheets:

*****Updated Style Sheets*****

• Download Full Style Sheet – v7.4d (pdf)
• Download Chicago Style Reference Sheet – v1.2d (Pdf)
• Download Template Document (Word)