The political stakes of cancer: New contexts, new subjectivities

As continents like Africa and Asia are argued to be facing a “cancer epidemic”, it has become increasingly clear that cancer is not only a problem of the wealthy or the global north but a matter of global concern.

In the past decade, there has been a particularly significant expansion in writings on cancer in the global south which have sought to unpack the social and political stakes of cancer for new subjectivities and within new contexts. This is producing a far more complex picture of cancer than what has been held so far, one in which culture, community, values, materialities, affects, power/knowledge, socio-political stakes, colonial and postcolonial histories, and more, have become an integral part for conceptualising this disease.

In this workshop we aim to bring together early career researchers investigating cancer in various social, political and geographical formations whose work is building the new landscape of cancer research. By bringing together scholars researching and writing about cancer from multiple disciplinary and geographical vantage points, we hope to facilitate a global conversation on the stakes, forms and milieus within which cancer appears, lives and operates.

This workshop will be the first step in building a global network of early career researchers working on cancer in new contexts and with new subjectivities. The network will come together for future conferences and publication collaborations. We particularly welcome researchers working in or on the global south.

Speakers at the event

• Violeta Argudo Portal, Institute of Public Goods and Policies, Spain 
• Ignacia Arteaga, University of Cambridge
• Luiz Alves, Fiocruz, Brazil 
• Kirsten Bell, University of Roehampton
• Shagufta Bhangu, King’s College London
• Carlo Caduff, King’s College London
• Ying Chen, National University Singapore 
• Thandeka Cochrane, King’s College London
• Masha Denisova, Maastricht University
• Jennifer Fraser, King’s College London
• Mette Freier Hansen, University of Oslo
• Zahra Hayat, University of California, Berkeley 
• Rebecca Henderson, University of Florida 
• Bertha Lesego Kgatitswe, University of Witwatersrand 
• Marissa Mika , University of California, Berkeley 
• Héloïse Pillayre, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Centre Léon Bérard in Lyon 
• Ruth Prince, University of Oslo 
• Fabien Provost, King’s College London 
• Maya Raphael, University of Cambridge 
• David Reubi, King’s College London 
• Nickolas Stepney, King’s College London 
• Solenn Thircuir, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 and Centre Léon Bérard in Lyon
• Noémi Tousignant, University College London
• Cecilia van Hollen, Georgetown University