CfP: 'Making Biological Minds', University of Leeds, 21st-22nd September, 2017
Deadline for abstract submission: 31st July 2017
Organised
by Sean Dyde, in cooperation with the University of Leeds and the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.
The
neurosciences are flourishing, while the relationship between the
neurosciences and the humanities is not. Whereas some scholars have
welcomed closer collaboration, much work attempting to
bring the two together can seem off-puttingly imperial or else
preparatory to a larger engagement. These deficiencies in turn have
generated widespread doubt that either side has anything to learn from
the other. In this two-day conference, we will argue differently.
We explore ways in which the broad range of practices, methods and
theories within the neurosciences and the humanities may offer
cooperation, while the disciplines still retain their professional
identities. Both fields working towards a common goal to describe,
however tantalisingly, what it means to be human.
We
welcome scholars with interests in the human sciences broadly construed –
from philosophers to biologists, historians to psychologists,
geographers to neuroscientists, sociologists to medical
and psychiatric researchers – to discuss the interplays and shocks
between mind and brain, body and society. Questions and topics include,
but are not limited to:
- How do patients and their families drive neurological research?
- What impetus do the performing, literary or visual arts give to medical science?
- How do the different practices of the neurosciences fit together?
- What are the relationships between knowledge from the humanities and neuro- and psychological-sciences?
- How is pain represented in mind, brain and culture?
- Is language an object or tool of study within the mind, brain and social sciences?
- How may educational practices influence our understanding of mind and brain?
- Where can the neurosciences and humanities guide policy making?
- What should, or should not, be encompassed in any theory of brain or mind?
- Where does neuroscience fit within the long durée history of the mind/soul/spirit?
Invited
speakers include: Felicity Callard (University of Durham/Birkbeck,
United Kingdom), Stephen T Casper (Clarkson University, United States),
Roger Smith (Institute of the History of Science
and Technology, Russian Federation), and Claudia Stein (University of
Warwick, United Kingdom).
Attendees may also be interested in attending our celebrations for the 60th anniversary of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds, to be held on the 19th
and 20th of September. Further information can be found here:
http://www.bshs.org.uk/cfp-
We
especially encourage PhD students, early-career researchers and junior
academics to participate, as selected presentations will be submitted
for publication in a special issue of
Studies in Biological and Biomedical Sciences. We invite contributions of individual papers to this conference with
abstracts of 300 words and a short CV.