Pulse Seminar: Edward Fischer & Manon Parry – Cultural Contexts of Health & Long Covid

Pulse Seminar March 19th, 15:00-17:00

University of Amsterdam: Kloveniersburgwal 48, room e1.01e

Edward fischer – Long Covid, Lived Experience, and the Limits of Medical Categories
Long Covid resists biomedical approaches that organize illness into discrete systems-neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal-as if the body were a machine with separable parts. Instead, it moves between and across these supposed boundaries, complicating treatment and policy. At a deeper level, it blurs distinctions between the psycho and the somatic, the individual and the social. Long Covid emerges from viral infection but its course and consequences are co-constructed with cultural/social/economic contexts. With as many as 3% of adults in high-income countries having activity-limiting symptoms, Long Covid presents a biopsychosocial crisis that exposes the limitations of narrowly biomedical framings. This talk situates patient narratives (including my own) alongside lab studies and epidemiological analysis to argue that Long Covid must be understood as both biological and social. It is best approached through systemic thinking that can address structural inequalities, disability recognition, workplace protections, and patient-led science.

Edward (Ted) Fischer is Professor of Anthropology and Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs the Cultural Contexts of Health and Wellbeing Initiative. His research focusses on issues of political economy, values, health, and wellbeing.

Manon Parry – Cultures of Evaluation
Cultures of evaluation are the cornerstone of public health, as what is measured, or not measured, determines which interventions are applied and how. Yet the full range of data points embedded in this process is often invisible, a “black box” of historical legacies and cultures of research and practice. This presentation will introduce a new transdisciplinary research agenda intended to provide a critical assessment of this knowledge-production. By focusing “upstream,” where health issues are conceptualized and interventions designed and studied, the results will counter the predominant emphasis in much research on the “downstream” effects, generating much-needed insights into a largely unexamined aspect of health. The project is undertaken in collaboration with researchers in SSGH as well as public health professionals and policymakers to ensure the research addresses urgent health and care related problems and delivers actionable insights.

Manon Parry is Professor of Medical and Nursing History at VU Amsterdam and Associate Professor of American Studies and Public History at UvA. She directs the PULSE Network for Medical and Health Humanities and is Faculty Lead for the Health Humanities within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research.

Next pulse seminar May 21: Hein van den Berg and Mariana Gusso Nickel on Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis