One of the EUROPACH post-doctoral researchers - Justyna Struzik - was a guest researcher at the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction in Lisbon. During her visit, she focused on the developments of harm reduction programs in Poland and in the CEE region. Struzik participated also in Drug-Related Deaths expert meeting and conducted some interviews with professionals working in harm reduction programs.
Our non-academic partner (AP) Kaos GL reports on EUROPACH and the research team's recent meeting with them at the University of Basel on September 10th, 2018. In addition to EUROPACH team members, representatives from Kaos GL, IKGV (HRDF), Pembe Hayat LGBT (Pink Life LGBT) and Pozitif-iz participated in the meeting. The report discusses the importance of EUROPACH's artwork and policy instrument archives, and emphasizes the project's oral history interviews, which are being carried out in Poland, Turkey, Germany, the UK and on the European level, as particulary helpful for their work. The EUROPACH project's soon-to-be-published interactive map also gets a lot of attention in the report. The complete text from the report can be found here.
A new English-language anthology "The Queer Intersectional in Contemporary Germany Essays on Racism, Capitalism and Sexual Politics", which was edited and has an introduction by Christopher Sweetapple, includes an essay by EUROPACH's Zülfukar Çetin entitled "The Dynamics of Queer Politics and Gentrification in Berlin". "The essays in this volume represent a small snapshot of writers working at this point of convergence between anti-racist and queer politics and scholarship from the context of Germany."
Podczas konferencji Kobiece utopie w działaniu. Sto lat praw wyborczych kobiet, badaczka z projektu Europach - Justyna Struzik - zaprezentowała wstępnie wyniki badań w ramach sesji Gender w porządkach religijnych, religie w reżimach płci. W swoim wystąpieniu poruszyła kwestię roli Kościoła katolickiego w kształtowaniu dyskursu wokół HIV/AIDS w okresie transformacji. Na początku lat 90. XX wieku rozmaite wyłaniające się dyskursy wokół HIV/AIDS prezentowały fakt zakażenia i chorobę w kategoriach moralnych (np. „winy moralnej” – prymas J. Glemp), odstępstwa od normy i obcości. Zarówno używanie narkotyków jak i wchodzenie w nieheteroseksualne i nienormatywne relacje seksualne były przedstawiane jako „choroby duszy” (M. Kotański). Z drugiej strony na poziomie praktyk polityk społecznych widoczna była także postawa „pochylania się” nad osobami żyjącymi z HIV i/lub AIDS.
Konferencja odbyła się w dniach 21-22 września 2018 w Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim w Krakowie.
EUROPACH team members Friederike Faust (Humboldt University), Justyna Struzik (Jagiellonian University) and Zülfukar Çetin (University of Basel) convene a session at the 14th International Society for Ethnology and Folklore conference (SIEF2019) to be held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain from 14-17 April 2019 with the theme "Track Changes: Reflecting on a Transforming World". The title of their session is "The ongoing brink of transformation - persistent activist aspirations of the same unachieved future" and the short abstract reads, "The panel explores the persistence of activists in the context of constant unachieved goals. We discuss the role of emotions, technologies and social memory in shaping aspirations of future transformation, and possible aberrations in a linear narration of social movements' success." The call for papers, posters and AV media are now open and will close on 15 October 2018 so to read the elaborated asbtract and/or propose a paper, click here.
Just prior to the International AIDS Conference to be held in Amsterdam this year, EUROPACH researchers will present material at the European African HIV/AIDS & Hepatitis C Community Summit. The talk, entitled "Europe’s “integrity” on migration, HIV/AIDS and the body politic", will rely on rulings by the European Court of Human Rights to explore HIV in relation to the politics of migration. If you attend the conference, be sure to add this to your schedule!
As part of a panel on "Activism and organisations", join for a EUROPACH presentation at the AIDS 2018 pre-conference and 4th International Conference on the Social Sciences and Humanities in HIV (full program available here) entitled "The Witness Seminar as a Method for Recording HIV/AIDS Histories" from 9:45-11:00 on Monday 23 July. The theme of this year's conference is "Intensifying the Social in the Biomedical Era".
Justyna Struzik will share selected Europach findings in her presentation on 'Polish HIV/AIDS Organizations through the Lens of Various Social Actors’ Biographies' during a poster session 'Biographies in Organizations – Organizations in Biographies' at the XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology in Toronto. Click here to learn more about the session.
For German speakers, have a look at the recently published review by EUROPACH's Zülfukar Çetin of the book "AIDS. Autopsie einer Bedrohung im geteilten Deutschland" ("AIDS. The autopsy of a threat in divided Germany") by Henning Tümmers: "Mit seiner Studie leistet Henning Tümmers eine umfassende vergleichende und verflechtungsgeschichtliche Analyse der Aids-Politik in der Bundesrepublik und der DDR während der 1980er-Jahre...Das selbstgesteckte Ziel, "eine Brücke zwischen Zeit- und Medizingeschichte [zu] schlagen" (S. 16), hat der Autor jedenfalls auf eindrückliche und anregende Weise erreicht."
At the third Mucem conference in preparation for an upcoming exhibition of European HIV/AIDS artefacts from the museum's archive, members of EUROPACH presented our project and excerpts from interviews from the European HIV/AIDS Archive. The day also included three panels: on community groups, on care providers and on scientific research. We also watched and discussed the fascinating short film "Sida, nouveaux traitements, une histoire en mouvement", which was made in 1997. Visit this website to browse through their expansive collection of HIV/AIDS artefacts.
