~Elizabeth Peel / @profpeel
When the sunny 9 July 2017 opening of ISCHP2017 came around, featuring the book launch of the Critical Approaches to Health book series, and poetry from local BME and men’s mental health group Showcase Smoothie (and local ales, pies and strawberries and cream!) it seemed like only yesterday I was discussing putative themes and keynotes with the ISCHP Committee in front of a log fire in Grahamstown, South Africa two years previously.
We were delighted to host ISCHP2017 at Loughborough and welcome 120 delegates from 24 different countries to the campus. While the parallel streams focused on the conference themes of ageing, diversity and inclusivity, mental health, and innovations in critical theory and method contained excellent critical scholarship, for me it was the plenary sessions (and the ceilidh!) that made the conference.
There was a series of excellent ‘mystery’ provocative five-minute challenges namely:
- Are we working within silos of knowledge? (Poul Rohleder);
- Considering our discipline’s footprint in addressing global health issues (Britta Wigginton);
- Is critical psychology still relevant in a ‘post-truth’ era? (Adam Jowett).
And the cryptically entitled:
- Why are we talking about …. again? (Anthea Lesch);
- The biggest lie on the Internet (Ally Gibson);
- actuALLY (Brett Scholz);
- Optimism (Andrea Lamarre); and
- An honour of which I am very sensible (Glen Jankowski)
We had six excellent pre-conference workshops. I attended Neda Mahmoodi and Glen Jankowski’s practical session in which we developed impromptu memes and podcasts. Other workshops covered visualising health and illness (Ally Gibson & Andrea LaMarre), multi-media storytelling (Elisabeth Harrison & Carla Rice), using photography (Periklis Papaloukas & Iain Williamson), qualitative research (Wendy Stainton-Rogers & Carla Willig) and conversation analysis (Marco Pino & Charles Antaki). Wider aspects of the conference programme included a very interesting film and a photography display, both very well received.
The four keynote speakers – Ama de-Graft Aikins, Antonia Lyons, Davina Cooper and Dave Harper - did a really excellent job of stimulating thought and discussion around the important topics of Africa’s chronic illness burden, youth drinking cultures, prefigurative concepts, and public mental health respectively. The pecha kucha presentations were diverse and of a very high standard. I’d encourage those already planning (?!) for ISCHP2019 to consider the plenary formats of pecha kucha and five-minute challenge as their submission format of choice: not only do they capture the audience; but you capture a wider audience too. Here you can revisit the full programme_and the book of abstracts.
No conference is complete without dancing and prizes! Our heart rates were impressively raised at the post-Gala dinner ceilidh and book/Routledge book voucher prizes were awarded to the following:
- Student presentation: Sarah Gillborn (Leeds Beckett University)
- Poster: Ian Williamson (De Montfort University)
- Pecha kucha: Craig Owen (St Marys University)
- 5 minute challenge: Harriet Gross (University of Lincoln)
- Social media contributions: Andrea Lamarre (University of Guelph)
- Most enthusiastic ceilidh dancer: Glen Jankowski (Leeds Beckett University)
Mine is just one perspective on the conference and there will be many others. As a community is needed to raise a child, so too is one needed to organize a conference, and my thanks go out again to all the conference planning committee, Sue White and other Loughborough team members Kathrina Connabeer, Carolyn Plateau, Laura Thompson and Gemma Witcomb. Psychology technician Peter Beaman popped over at late notice to take this great set of photographs for posterity, enjoy!
Last but not least, please do complete the conference feedback form – a really helpful thing to do, and useful for the team who takes on ISCHP2019.