Call for Papers: October 21, 2025 – November 21, 2025
Symposia: The Science and Medicine of Bodily Habits, 13–17 July 2026 in Edinburgh.
Co-convenors: Kristin Hussey (Newcastle University); Racha Kirakosian (University of Freiburg); Alexander Wragge-Morley (Lancaster University)
These symposia will engage with scientific and medical writings on bodily habits from the medieval to the modern periods. Over the centuries, people have sought to explain the apparent regularity of bodily phenomena such as eating, sleeping and evacuating. In particular, debates emerged about the extent to which these activities are amenable to human control. When framed as habits, such phenomena may be regarded as subject to control – although deeply entrenched habits may be very hard to shift. Alternatively, viewing these phenomena as instincts may place them beyond the reach of medical or social transformation.
We seek papers that address the history of these questions from the middle ages to the modern period, especially as they intersect with medicine and/or health. We are conscious, however, that disciplinary configurations vary across time and place, and encourage applications addressing habit and health from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including (for instance) religion alongside science and medicine. Central to this theme are questions about the extent to which supposedly automatic bodily processes unfolding over time may be responsive to some kind of control or shaping. Papers might thus include scientific and medical approaches to the periodicity of sleeping, eating, urinating, and defecating. But they may also engage with questions about the role that patterns of culture, religion, or work may play in changing or reinforcing regular bodily processes.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 2,000 characters (about 250 words) to Kristin.hussey@newcastle.ac.uk by November 21st. For more about the conference visit: 2026 HSS Call for Proposals – History of Science Society
Contact Email:
kristin.hussey@newcastle.ac.uk