Podcast with Nickolas Surawy Stepney, Research Associate, King’s College London, in discussion with Thandeka Cochrane, Postdoctoral Research Associate, King’s College, London. This episode t…
With recent emphasis on “cancer epidemics” in Asia and Africa (Banerjee 2020; Travis 2007; Lingwood et al. 2008) it has become increasingly clear that cancer is not only…
Somatosphere welcomes you to the first part of our October edition of “In the Journals.” Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and…
Welcome to the second part of our second round of “In the Journals” for September. Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and…
Welcome to the first round of ‘In the Journals’ for September! Scroll through our monthly round up of new research across anthropology, STS and social science journals. American…
Burnout. The Emotional Experience of Political Defeat, by Hannah Proctor (Verso, 2024) Hannah Proctor’s Burnout is not about how tiredness arises from the daily grind. Instead, “burnout” is…
Since 2019, a growing group of “anti-natalist” activists have been used as a foil to demonstrate rising anxieties regarding future prospects of life on earth. Writing for the…
Reflecting on the complexities of conducting research in a region gripped by administrative upheaval and political uncertainty, I write to open up this forum to fellow anthropologists and…
Eugene Raikhel, Founder of Somatosphere Dörte Bemme: Tell me a little bit about Somatosphere’s origin story. How did it all begin? Eugene Raikhel: The website was launched in…
Following a day-long, company-wide “workplace culture” workshop for a Silicon Valley startup that creates and oversees mental health care chatbots (pseudonym: The Startup), I find myself sitting on…
Most of us probably feel well-schooled in the nature of respiratory viruses after a blistering global pandemic and frequent news items of the latest outbreak of another strain…
Ways of Being. Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence , by James Bridle (Penguin Books, 2023) If you read the cover of James Bridle’s book,…
The increased demand for distant cures amid heightened concerns about infection in healthcare facilities, coupled with the “great resignation” in medicine since the COVID pandemic, have together crea…
The Distance Cure and The Doctor Who Wasn’t There are political books about medical media. Zeavin offers illuminating analyses of a range of distant psychotherapies: epistolary analysis, telephonic…
“all new media deal in futures” -Jeremy Greene “automation is the dream of autonomy” -Hannah Zeavin It was at once an odd experience and an exhilarating one. Sitting…
Hanna Zeavin’s The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy, and Jeremy A. Greene’s The Doctor Who Wasn’t There: Technology, History, and the Limits of Telehealth, are both histories…
To read these two brilliant books side by side is an exhilarating experience—they not only offer new historical and theoretical insights into the role of media in clinical…
The origins of The Doctor Who Wasn’t There are inescapably tangled with The Distance Cure—tangled in cords of telephone wires. The telephone was both the subject and object…
Letters always, according to Lacan, reach their destination. We all write with others, even or especially when we sit down to make work that is classified as a…
In this forum, five scholars from different but intersecting fields of historical research engage with Hannah Zeavin and Jeremy Greene’s recent books on telehealth and telemedicine. As all…
The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media, by Bishnupriya Ghosh (Duke University Press, 2023) In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and with various forecasts predicting likelihoods of a…
Infertile Environments: Epigenetic Toxicology and the Reproductive Health of Chinese Men, by Janelle Lamoreaux (Duke University Press, 2023). The World Health Organization recently called to cente…
Introduction At present, we are living through several major, arguably foreseen, historical events and political shifts. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has destabilised and further fragmented …
I had just begun my year of social service when I met a patient I will never forget. Let’s call her María. She was around 50 years old…