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Conference Theme

The conference has been postponed by one year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We have opted for an online conference in 2021 to ensure maximum safety and participation.

The first Biennial Conference of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology (ENPA)
1–3 June 2021, online (Hosted by the University of Helsinki)

Mind Embedded and Embodied – Futures of Psychological Anthropology

As the global political economy becomes increasingly multipolar, the assumption that psychological and bio-psychiatric ‘insights,’ predominantly produced in the ‘West,’ may be imposed on other social groups, is increasingly open to question. Psychological anthropology is uniquely positioned to address the tensions between universalising and relativising understandings of the human condition. As the first ENPA Biennial, this conference will be launched as an inclusive forum for scholars from a wide range of disciplinary and thematic orientations to discuss, theorise and reflect on historically and socio-culturally situated concepts of the mind, the body, and their entanglements in cultural, social, and/or political worlds. Critical perspectives on the concepts of mainstream psychology – that posit humans as subject to universal psychological patterns of feeling, thinking and interacting – are encouraged; productive engagements across the disciplinary boundaries of anthropology and cognitive science, psychiatry, philosophy, evolutionary biology, and others will also be welcome. Through a fruitful dialogue within and between disciplines, the European Network for Psychological Anthropology (ENPA) aims to foster new insights not only in research contexts, but also in policy-making, therapy, and healing.

In collaboration with EASA and University of Helsinki