Conference: Society for the Social History of Medicine conference 2026
- Date: Tuesday 30 June 2026
- Location: University of Leeds
- Interval: Every day
- Until: Friday 3 July 2026
- Cost: Registration costs tbc
The theme for the Society for the Social History of Medicine conference 2026 is In/Out.
What does it mean to be ‘in good health’?
How did people enter and exit healthcare systems?
How can considerations of the terms ‘in’ or ‘out’ help us understand the histories of health?
As healthcare systems around the world come under increasing pressure in terms of their capacity, cost, and capabilities, ‘In/Out’ asks how the history of health and healthcare has been shaped by structural, material, emotional, and psychological boundaries. By bringing together histories of health and medicine from antiquity to the present day, we will explore what ‘in’ and ‘out’ can reveal about the impact of different gateways, routes, breaks, and barriers on people’s experiences of health, disability, illness, and healthcare in the past. Care inequalities are ever-present, and we also seek to reveal the experiences of those who could not or chose not to access medical care, or whose access was partial, delayed, interrupted, or contingent. We also seek to understand the associated legacies of harm that can accompany such inequalities. Finally, whether inside or outside formal care settings, medical practitioners also entered and exited practice as both givers and receivers of healthcare, so we also seek to consider the experiences of those individuals.
Taking a broad definition of both ‘in’ and ‘out’ we invite papers that consider experiences of being in and/or out of health or health care in any period or geographical location. These might include, but are not limited to the following:
- Healthcare ‘pathways’, ‘journeys’ or ‘processes’ (e.g. entering, proceeding through or leaving care in various contexts or conditions)
- In and out of care (e.g. diagnostics, recuperation, recovery, recurrence)
- Healthcare spaces (e.g. in/outdoors, in/outpatient, healthy spaces)
- Enablers and/or barriers to accessing or leaving care
- Entering and/or leaving practice
- Being inside or outside of orthodoxy or convention (e.g. trends or fashions, diagnostic classification systems)
- Inclusion and exclusion in healthcare
- Bodies in/out of health (e.g. leaky bodies, bodily boundaries, entering/leaving/removal from bodies)
- In/out of the body (e.g. IVF, organ transplants, assistive technologies, substances)
How to take part
We invite proposals for:
- 20-minute individual papers (including paper title, 250-word abstract, 150-word speaker bio)
- Full panels (including panel title and 200-word rationale for panel, chair’s bio and material as above for the 3-4 papers)
- 1.5 hr roundtable/interactive session (including session title, 300-word rationale, 200-word outline of format and any room set up requirements, bios for the chair and speakers)
If the session you would like to run does not meet any of these definitions, please do contact the conference organisers (link opens email server) to discuss potential formats.
We particularly welcome papers or panels that are explicitly inclusive and embed diversity into our discussions.
Submissions should be emailed as a single document attachment to the conference email address (link opens email server) by the deadline of 17:00 (GMT) on 11th January 2026.
Key dates
17:00 (GMT), 11th January 2026: abstract submission deadline
February 2026: invitations to present will be circulated
30th June – 3rd July 2026: conference
Organisers
Conference contact address
sshm2026leeds[@]gmail.com
Conference convenors
Dr Alexia Moncrieff and Dr Katherine Rawling
Conference committee
Dr Alex Bamji; Professor Shane Doyle; Megan Graham; Professor Robert Hornsby; Dr Will Jackson; Dr Joanna Phillips; Alexandra Ward