ABOUT
Since 2010, the conference entitled The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization has taken place. The first one was in Aalborg, Denmark – and since then the conference has been held in several other places in Europe.
The founder organizing team consists of Kieran Keohane (University College Cork, Ireland), Bert van den Bergh (The Hague University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands), Domonkos Sik (University Eötvös Loránd Budapest, Hungary) and Sabine Flick (Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg, Germany). In Brno, the team is joined by Csaba Szaló, Karolína Gregorová, Simona Hendrychová, and Soňa Enenkelová (Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia).
The main objectives of the conference have always been to address various interconnections between psychiatry and society. The conferences have done so by focusing on how contemporary epidemics, diseases, illnesses and medical syndromes are related to cultural pathologies of the collective social body, and how the body politic is related to the transformation and social embedding of psychiatric thinking. The central research hypothesis guiding the conferences is that contemporary epidemics are to be analysed in the light of radical changes in our civilization and of the social hegemonization of the biomedical and psychiatric perspective. A particular focus of the conferences has been the role of humanities and social sciences, particularly sociology, philosophy, psychology and anthropology, in helping to understand the connection between social transformations and psychiatric perceptions of health & well-being.
This conference is associated with the Routledge book series The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization, which advances interdisciplinary research into the social and cultural dimensions of contemporary forms of suffering and crisis.
In the previous conferences, we have been fortunate enough to attract acclaimed keynote speakers such as:
- Alain Ehrenberg, Professor of Sociology, Université Paris Decartes, France.
- Harvie Fergusson, Professor of Sociology, University of Glasgow, Scotland.
- Richard Wilkinson, Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology, University of Nottingham, England.
- Keith Tester, Professor of Sociology, Hull University, England.
- Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies. University of Bristol, England.
- Dany-Robert Dufour, Professor of Philosophy, University of Paris, France.
- Renata Salecl, Senior Researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
- Jan Slaby, Professor of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
- Ilina Singh, Professor of Neuroscience & Society, Oxford University, England.
- Allan V. Horwitz, Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University, US.
- Matthew Ratcliffe, Professor of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria.
- Hartmut Rosa, Professor of Sociology, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany.
- Thomas Fuchs, Professor for Philosophical Foundations of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Clinic Heidelberg, Germany.
- Alan Blum, Senior Scholar at York University, England.
- Chris Rojek, Professor of Sociology, University of London, England.
- Máté Zombory, Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
- Nidesh Lawtoo, Leuven University.
- Lisa Baraitser, Birkbeck, University of London.
- Graeme Gilloch, Lancaster University.
- Andrea Vetter & Matthias Fersterer, Brandenburg University of Technology /Unleashing Fantasy for Transformation Collective.
- Des Fitzgerald, UCC Radical Humanities Laboratory
Submit your abstract
We invite abstracts that critically examine the social pathologies of contemporary life and their historical development. Contributions may address issues such as alienation, exploitation, acceleration, social suffering, and illness, as well as practices of care, reproductive labour, bodily autonomy, and collective action that point toward emancipatory social transformation.
Artwork: Ladislava Gažiová, Ornament, 2025. Spray on canvas, 100×80 cm.