End of the 2015-2016 course. Some key points and events

Last week we held our last POBICS meeting on this 2015-2016. It has been an interesting course, where we have learnt and also carry out a lot of events and things. In order to close down this course, we want to point off some of the main events we have participated this year.

• Writing. We have written several papers, some of them have been published (Biocapitalism and norm suspension, Fear in refugees by a possible outbreak of scabies), other are in reviewing (citizenship and epidemic surveillance, from biopower to kinepower); others are about to be send (ebola and images, new kind of biopolitics in the epidemics realm, syndromic observation) and others have been rejected (epidemiological factor, scenarios as states of emergency). About the last ones, we are reviewing them and we want to re-sent to other journals this fall.
• Congress. We have participated in the ESHHS-CHEIRON congress with a communication about the epidemiological factor (extracted from the rejected paper), and next month, as you know, we will be in the 4S/EASST Congress. Finally, the first days of September we will be in the II International AIBR Anthropology Congress.
• Seminaries. We have went to some of the UAB seminaries, organized by the Social Psychology Deparment, like the Jorge-Castillo Seminary and the Andrés G. Seguel Seminary.
• POBICS web. As we announced, POBICS has a new domain for his web: www.pobics.com
• Topics researched. Epidemics and State of Emergency; Ebola and Images, Big Data in Epidemics; Virtual Platforms to report about epidemics our communicable diseases by lay-people; new kinds of biosurveillance; historical approachs to epidemics; drones and health; fear and panic within epidemics.
• Grants & projects. We have continued with our FPI project, achieved last year. On the other hand, our second application to the FPU grant has been rejected :(

And that is all! We will post again next month at the 4S/EASST Congress. Until then, we will re-posting old post in our social networks.

Have a good summer and see you soon!

Thanks for reading us every week.

Photo Credit: Bousure

Closing spring & Summer events in POBICS

We are about to end June, and POBICS have some news and upcoming events, so we think is

interesting to show and post them. Here our state of affairs:

• This morning we have held the "panel" anual meeting: our PhD students Mariana, Pedro and Enrique have been assessed by two chairs professors. They have fold our current research topics and professors have exposed some suggestions and improvements. The main concept has been the "focus" on the particular question or objective for each one: digital epidemics, drones and the role of lay-people in biosurveillance. 

• Tomorrow we have an "essay" in the ICCB  within the tests that 4S/EASST Congress coordinators are perfomed. We will seize this chance in order to prepare our next Congress, the ESHHS-CHEIRON Joint Meeting, next Thurday. 

• In this vein, ESHHS-CHEIRON Joint Meeting is being held from 06/27 (today) to 07/01, so if you are interesting in any kind of History of Science topics, you could go to the Psychology Faculty at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

• Next mont of July we will close some still-open works like slides to our 4 contributions to the 4S/EASST Congress, our drafts in Biosurveilling Citizenships, Drones & Epidemics and Images as State of Emergency.

• POBICS has a new domain! From now, our webpage is pobics.com and not more pobics.wix.com/pobics. In this form, we think our work will be easier to find and our SEO will improve.

Photo Credit: Rob Leeming

New paper in process: Ebola and images

After our last paper delivery last december, we have start another project in order to write a new paper, titled: "Ebola, experts and population.  A graphic study about the Spanish case". Although it is still a draft paper, we want to share with you some abstract ideas in order to discuss them:

"Two years ago, ebola outbreak appeared as a real threat to Europe due to its closeness to Africa (and particularly in Spain with the nurse-infection controversy), the place where ebola is endemic. In that moment, it emerged several information (news on TV, newspapers, Internet, European Governments…) with a common and “invisible” element: images surrounding this virus. In this paper, we aim to analyse the role that these images performed on the enactment of ebola pandemics. We set out these images are a new kind of scenario in which the biological and legal expertise are undifferentiated, but with which lay people is affected. In order to unfold our arguments, we will show some samples about our study case, based on a) focus groups with lay-people, and b) images gathered and analysed from diverse ebola-related material."

As always, when the paper is finished, we will upload to academia.edu, so you will check it deeply. Until then, we want your discussions about this first ideas!

Photo Credit: CDC Global