European Network for Psychological Anthropology Biennial Conference:

 Anthropologies and Psychologies in (Inter)Action - Engaging Interdisciplinary Perspectives

11 - 13 June 2025, University of Münster, Germany

Conference information: https://enpanthro.net/enpa-2025-conference/

CFP for an in-person panel:

Anthropology, Psychology, and Self-Understanding: Exploring Educative Contexts and Possibilities

The fields of anthropology and psychology share a common educative power to expand people’s worldview and understanding of themselves. This panel explores how anthropological and psychological frameworks in educative contexts catalyze novel ways of apprehending social worlds and individual lives. By foregrounding ‘self-understanding’ as an analytic, we seek to explore how vocabularies and concepts from anthropology and psychology give voice and meaning to personal experiences in the act of rendering life and society comprehensible. Constructively, concepts aligned with lived experiences may offer a springboard for new forms of knowledge production, reformed intersubjective relations, critical reflections, solace, and emancipation. Adversely, some educational contexts may not be appropriate for the processing of the personal while concepts may shape distorted or unethical understandings of the self. Papers that draw from (auto)ethnographic research, teaching experience, and/or clinical practice are especially welcome. Educative contexts include in-person and online courses, schools and university campuses, self-education and private reading, psychotherapy, and clinical diagnoses, among others. We welcome papers that explore the following or related themes:

Pedagogy/Andragogy - Can anthropology increase its relevance to students by engaging personal aspects of their lives? When might the connection of concepts to personal experience be harmful? What ethical cautions are most important for educators? What are the ethics, potentials, and risks of encouraging students (of all ages and backgrounds) to bring forth their personal experiences? How can those designing and delivering educational content ideally mediate subjective and objective worlds and their ambiguous interconnections?

Community Mental Health - How does mental health vocabulary play out in people’s lives and relationships, for better and for worse? How may lived experience inform research, policy, and the (re)design of educational curricula? What issues can arise mediating the subjective and collective in mental health support?

Emancipation/Empowerment - How, when, and why are analyses of the personal empowering? How can analyses of the personal find fruitful incorporation into institutional practice and objectives? Can such incorporation ultimately disenfranchise rather than empower? How can engagement with formal registers and new vocabularies offer expanded ‘quality of life’ (broadly defined)?  

The Biopolitics of Self-Understanding - How can critical interpretations of aspects of life and society shed light on power dynamics? How might these insights lead to transformative change close to home? How can sociocultural interpretations and psychological diagnoses offer solace to people who seek to understand their lives, including adversities? What is the role of self-understanding in healing and resilience? Can explanatory frameworks socialise people into a view of themselves and the world that is not to their benefit?

Decolonization - When anthropologies and psychologies offer vocabularies, concepts, and frameworks in educative contexts, how is the history and enduring legacy of colonialism inevitably part of educative engagements? Against such a historical backdrop, what is the aim of anthropology and psychology today? How to decolonize in the digital age of AI?

Please send your 250 word abstract by email to John Loewenthal jl137@soas.ac.uk and Arturo Marquez Jr. arturo.marquezjr@imperial.edu by January 28, 2025.