Vital Waters, standalone sequel: Explorative workshop on planetary health futures and temporalities
- Date
- 27 April 2026, 16:30–19:00
- Location
- Övre Slottsgatan 6, 753 10 Uppsala
- Type
- Workshop
- Organiser
- The Vital Waters Symposium is co-organised by the Centre for Health & Sustainability, the Dept of Cultural Anthropology & Ethnology, and UUniCORN with the support from SHIP.
- Contact person
- Mats Målqvist
What can the social sciences and humanities contribute to the emerging field of planetary health? How can critical perspectives on water-health relationships help address the compounding health challenges of the 21st century?
This interactive workshop is the standalone sequel to the symposium Vital Waters: Reimagining Planetary Health through Critical Social Sciences, earlier the same day.
The workshop will explore alternative ways of navigating planetary transformations and futures in health.
16:30 Doors open
17:00 Introductory talk
Future(s) Alert: Reimagining Planetary Futures of Health and Water, Christina Garsten, Professor, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS)
This talk critically examines how anticipatory practices, such as predictive models, risk assessments, and scenario-building, shape engagements with health and water as vital human resources. Drawing on anthropological and sociological perspectives, it interrogates how these “future(s) alerts” construct planetary futures as sites of crisis, governance, and intervention. Rather than treating such frameworks as neutral, the analysis situates them within uneven political economies and historically embedded power relations, asking whose futures are secured and whose are marginalized.
17:30-19:30 Participatory activities, led by multi-media artist eli eli.
In this engaging activity, participants will be guided to develop and share past and future ‘water worlds’ drawing inspiration from Swedish waterscapes, followed by closing discussion.
19:30-20:00 Open mingle
Drinks and canapés will be served for registered participants.