Samuel Bewiadzi Akakpo (ORCID) is a medical anthropologist at the University of Health and Allied Sciences, Ho, Ghana. He specialises in hospital ethnography, indigenous medical knowledge and healthcare systems, traditional bone setting, and African traditional medicine. He was a visiting Doctoral Fellow on the Making Clinical Sense project and currently serves as a Local Advisor (Ghana) on the Upcycled Clinic project. Samuel acknowledges the College of Humanities, University of Ghana, Legon, for awarding him the UG BANGA 3 Thesis Completion Grant (2022) and Anna Harris, Maastricht University, for awarding him a Doctoral Fellowship on the Making Clinical Sense Project (2023).
Kristina Andersen (ORCID) is an associate professor at the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her work explores how we can enable each other to envision our possible futures through digital craftsmanship within the context of material practices involving fibre-based objects. She is especially interested in ephemeral archives and how they might point towards physical manifestations of different outcomes.
Mathew Arthur (ORCID) is an instructor in Women’s and Gender Studies at Capilano University, Canada. He has taught for over a decade, both within and outside the university, and runs the Doing STS initiative. This Vancouver-based educational nonprofit hosts public talks and community workshops on feminist technoscience and affect studies. For almost a decade, he volunteered as a teacher in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and led a free weekly feminist science studies seminar at the Vancouver Public Library. His recent book project, Everything Is a Lab (Imbricate, 2024), explores zinemaking, collage, foraging, fermenting, and amateur perfumery as methods for creating a more livable world.
Victoria Bates (ORCID) is an Associate Professor in Modern Medical History at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research expertise ranges from nineteenth-century forensic medicine to current-day sensory studies. Victoria’s Future Leaders Fellowship, ‘Sensing Spaces of Healthcare’ (UKRI, 2020-27), brings together history, medical humanities, spatial/sensory studies and design. She is the author of Making Noise in the Modern Hospital (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and Feeling Blue: Colour in the Modern British Hospital (Manchester University Press, 2025).
Nicole Bouvy (ORCID) is a surgeon and Professor of Innovative Surgical Techniques at Maastricht University and Leiden UMC, the Netherlands, with a focus on sustainability and surgical innovation. She is the principal investigator of the CAREFREE project, aiming to reduce environmental impact in operating rooms. Nicole integrates circularity into clinical routines and medical training. She serves as a board member of the Dutch Society for Surgery, president of the Dutch Society for Evolutionary Surgery, and President of EAES. She also advises national and international sustainability committees, working to make surgical care both innovative and environmentally responsible.
Fanny Chabrol (ORCID) is an Institute for Sustainable Development and Research research fellow at the Centre for Population & Development in Paris, France. She is an anthropologist working on public health, infectious diseases and hospitals in the Global South. Her work is grounded in a political economy of health and an anthropology of infrastructures, examining the hospital as a truly multifaceted space. She is the author of Prendre soin de sa population. L’exception botswanaise face au sida (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2014) et co-authored with Jean-Paul Gaudillière, Introduction à la santé globale (Paris : La Découverte, 2023).
Nini (E.M.E.) Craenen is an Anesthesiologist at the University Medical Centre Groningen, the Netherlands, and specialises in cardiothoracic anesthesiology. Her current research focuses on the training of residents, from both the trainees’ and trainers’ perspectives. Additionally, she is involved in research on communication in the Operating Room.
Jasmin Dierkes (ORCID) is a sociologist and STS scholar, working on medical sociology, the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of professions, and educational studies through the lens of contemporary and historical analysis. Her work on simulation-based training in medical education sheds light on the training techniques and technologies of a ‘classical profession’ to represent subtle changes in the standards of professional teaching and work. She is a research associate at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Science and Technology Studies at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. The German Research Foundation supports her PhD project through the Graduate School 2696 at the University of Wuppertal, Germany.
Lukas Engelmann (ORCID) is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Senior Lecturer in the History and Sociology of Biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh, UK. His research focuses on the history of epidemiological reasoning in the twentieth century. He leads the Epidemy Lab, funded by an ERC Starting Grant. His first book, Mapping AIDS (Cambridge University Press, 2018), considers the visual and medical history of AIDS/HIV. His co-authored monograph with Christos Lynteris, Sulphuric Utopias (MIT Press, 2020), tells the technological history of fumigation and the political history of maritime sanitation at the turn of the twentieth century.
Myrthe Eussen (ORCID) is a medical doctor and PhD candidate at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, researching sustainability in surgical practice and hospital systems. She is part of the CAREFREE project and leads the education subcommittee of the Joint Task Force on Sustainability between EAES and SAGES. With a background in clinical medicine, she promotes circular healthcare by applying the 10R model to surgical settings. Myrthe lectures on Planetary Health, contributes to several Green Teams at Maastricht UMC+, and participates in national working groups on sustainable healthcare. Her work bridges clinical insight with policy reform to drive greener surgical care.
Marlaine S. Figueroa Gray is an Assistant Investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, Washington, U.S. and author of Creating Care: Art and Medicine in U.S. Hospitals (Lexington Books, 2022).
Taah Abongnelaa, Divine Fuh (ORCID), from Mankanikong in Bafut, Cameroon, is the Director of HUMA, the Institute for Humanities in Africa, at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he serves as an associate professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology. He is trained in Cameroon, Botswana and Switzerland. His research focuses on the politics of suffering and smiling, particularly on how people seek ways of smiling in the midst of their suffering. He has worked in Cameroon, Botswana, Senegal, and South Africa. He is currently interested in the life of ideas, the political economy of African knowledge production, and centring African epistemologies.
Jeremy Greene (ORCID) is the William H. Welch Professor of Medicine and the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, U.S., and a medical historian and practising internist whose research explores the impact of medical technologies on health and society. He directs the Institute of the History of Medicine and the Centre for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine at Johns Hopkins. His work focuses on the history of pharmaceuticals, telehealth, and disposable medical technologies, examining their influence on medical practice, public health, and the environment.
Alexander Grigoriev (ORCID) is a professor of data science for business and economics and an associate dean for research at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics, the Netherlands. He studied mathematics at Novosibirsk State University in Russia. He has been working in the banking and high-tech industries for several years and returned to academia in 1999. He obtained his PhD at Maastricht University in 2003. Most of his research focuses on the design and analysis of algorithms for a wide range of theoretical and practical problems. He publishes in the areas of combinatorial optimisation, theoretical computer science and operations research.
Anna Harris (ORCID) is a Professor of Anthropology and Medicine at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University, the Netherlands. She recently led an European Research Council (ERC) project, Making Clinical Sense, about technologies in learning medicine, and currently leads a new ERC project on creativity in hospitals, called The Upcycled Clinic. Recent books include Tom Rice’s Stethoscope (Reaktion, 2022), John Nott’s Making Sense of Medicine (Intellect, 2022), and A Sensory Education (Routledge, 2020). Her new monograph, Analogue Lessons: How to Cultivate Imagination of Bodies and Other Spaces, is under contract with MIT Press.
Matthew Harrison (ORCID) is the Head of Design at the Helix Centre, Imperial College London, UK, where he has spent the last 12 years working as a healthcare designer among the clinicians, staff, patients and visitors of St Mary’s Hospital in London. He has worked on projects from paediatric emergency medication to end-of-life care. He is currently designing in the world of dementia care, having been the primary carer for his late father.
Sophie Horrocks (ORCID) is a Designer at the Helix Centre, a research lab for design and health based at St Mary’s Hospital in London and part of Imperial College London, UK. Her work explores how participatory design can make healthcare systems and environments more inclusive –blending co-design, strategy, and storytelling to reimagine care.
Philomena Horsley (ORCID) is a medical anthropologist and research ethics consultant. She is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she also lectures. Her research has included medical autopsies (including Australia’s first cancer rapid autopsy programme), genetics and cancer, gender and health, family and domestic violence, and LGBTQ health and well-being. She teaches research ethics and currently chairs the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Victorian Department of Health & the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.
Tessa Keegel (ORCID) is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, Australia. Her research interests are in Work and Health. She is currently leading the Work after Heart and/or Lung Transplant (WAHLT) Study, funded by the Foote Foundation, through the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Trust. The WAHLT study examines the concept of ‘work’ for individuals after cardiothoracic transplant. Tessa received a heart transplant at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne Australia in December 2020.
Janina Kehr (ORCID) is Professor of Medical Anthropology and Global Health at the University of Vienna, Austria, where she leads the research group Health Matters. She works and publishes on global politics, colonial hauntings, moral economies, and the environmental side effects of biomedicine and public health, with a particular interest in infectious diseases, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and hospitals. She is the author of Spectres de la tuberculose (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2021) and co-editor of De la vie biologique à la vie sociale (La Découverte).
Flora Lysen (ORCID) is an assistant professor in the history of science and media in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Maastricht University, the Netherlands and a member of the Maastricht University Science, Technology and Society research group (MUSTS). Her current research focuses on the history of artificial intelligence in clinical decision-making and the practices of data ethics and data governance in new infrastructures for sharing health data. She is a member of MERIAN (the Maastricht University Experimental Research In And through the Arts Network).
Tiina Maripuu is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada, pursuing dissertation research on inpatient palliative care in Ontario.
Helen Milne (ORCID) is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her work explores how the systems, processes and tools of textiles and their production can be expanded to include broader audiences as a way to navigate the complexities of our socio-ecological crisis. Weaving, performance, and storytelling comprise her situated practice, where a multiplicity of experiences can coexist.
Catherine Montgomery (ORCID) is a Sociologist of Science & Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research focuses on the juncture between scientific knowledge production and clinical care, which she has explored ethnographically across multiple settings. She is a Co-investigator on the Wellcome Discovery Award’ Medicine without Doctors: Reimagining Care and Voice through Play’ [grant no. 304046/Z/23/Z] and Principal Investigator of the ERC-selected, UKRI-funded project ‘Data and the Healthcare ‘Revolution’?’ (DARE), which explores the mutual re-configuration of data practices, care and learning in data-driven healthcare.
John Nott (ORCID) is an economic and medical historian based in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (STIS) at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is currently working on the European Research Council (ERC)-funded project, The Epidemiological Revolution (grant agreement no. 947872), and the British Academy-funded project, Population Health in Practice. His recent book, Between Feast and Famine: Food, Health, and the History of Ghana’s Long Twentieth-Century, is available open-access from UCL Press.
Mirko Pasquini (ORCID) is an Assistant Professor in Medical Anthropology at the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His current project, “Mistrust in practice: an ethnography of suspicion in general medical practice in the aftermath of COVID-19”, financed by the Swedish Research Council, contributes to debates about the “crisis of trust” in the healthcare sector. Mirko’s book, The Negotiation of Urgency: Economies of Attention in an Italian Emergency Room , published by Rutgers University Press, analyses emergency room overcrowding, mistrust, violence, and triage. Mirko is also a member of the editorial board of “The Lancet Cases in Global Social Medicine.”
Jenna Mae Peterson is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada, developing a dissertation project about health services for older adults in Ontario.
Julia Rehsmann (ORCID) is a medical anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Department of Health Professions at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland. Her research focuses on palliative and end-of-life care, organ transplantation, gender and health, temporality, expertise, and the hospital as a space beyond the strictly medical. She is the PI of the collaborative research project “The global hospital: Reproducing healthcare through entanglements of labour, mobility and knowledge in Switzerland and Austria”, together with Janina Kehr (University of Vienna) and Jelena Tosic (University of St.Gallen), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Austrian Science Fund.
Lily Shapiro is a Collaborative Scientist at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI), in Seattle, Washington, U.S. and author of Connective Tissue: Factory Accidents and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery in South India (Rutgers University Press, 2025).
Amina Soulimani (ORCID) is a doctoral research fellow at HUMA-Institute for Humanities in Africa and a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her current research is at the intersection of science and technology studies and medical anthropology, investigating human-technology interactions in hospitals, the ethics of care, especially regarding biotechnologies and future hospitals in Morocco. She holds a Master’s in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor’s in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences from the African Leadership University, Mauritius.
Alice Street (ORCID) is Professor of Anthropology and Health at the University of Edinburgh, UK and specialises in the ethnographic study of medical technologies developed for and deployed in under-resourced settings. Her current research focuses on the environmental and social impacts of plastic waste from single-use medical devices, as well as the value assumptions that drive wastefulness in global health. She also explores the emergence of alternative, more sustainable and equitable global health innovation systems.
Shanti Sumartojo (ORCID) is Associate Professor of Design Research in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture and co-Director of WonderLab at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. An interdisciplinary and collaborative researcher grounded in cultural geography, her research practice develops concepts for understanding the experiential world, including atmospheres and ineffability, as well as creative and ethnographic methodologies to inform design and design practice. Recent work includes a social-impact driven inquiry into innovative methods for sustainable and just forms of systems change.
Janelle S. Taylor (ORCID) is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada. A medical anthropologist, she has researched social, cultural, and political dimensions of biomedicine in North America. She is the author of The Public Life of the Fetal Sonogram: Technology, Consumption, and the Politics of Reproduction (Rutgers University Press, 2008), co-editor with Linda Layne and Danielle Wozniak of Consuming Motherhood (Rutgers University Press, 2004), and has published numerous articles in leading journals of medicine and gerontology as well as anthropology. Her current research focuses primarily on dementia and caregiving.
Elvia Vasconcelos (ORCID) is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Industrial Design of the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Their work is grounded in a practice of sketching in real time, which they use in combination with techniques such as collage and embroidery, as a language to facilitate collaborative research processes.
Annie Zeng is a researcher and curator. She has conducted research in carbon transformation, developed interactive exhibits for science museums, and is currently programming for the contemporary arts with Fathomers, a creative research institute. Annie holds a master’s in Cultures of Arts, Science, and Technology from Maastricht University. She is based in Los Angeles, U.S., where she convenes participatory exhibitions and programs at the intersection of science, technology, and everyday life.
