10 Feb
2026
10 Feb
'26
3:40 p.m.
*Summer School*
*Call for Applications *
*(Deadline: February 15, 2026)*
**
*24^th univie: summer school – Scientific World Conceptions (USS-SWC)*
*GLOBAL HEALTH***
*Vienna, July 6-10, 2026*
*https://summerschool-ivc.univie.ac.at/*
**
*Course Description*
‘Global health’ has attracted wide attention. This program will
explore this interdisciplinary topic from a variety different but
interrelated perspectives. First, global health reveals significant
health disparities: but what causes these, and which disparities are
unjust and demand redress? How types of social oppression – such as,
racism and heterosexism – relate to health injustices will be
explored, alongside investigating the contentious role of advocacy in
public health.
Second, global health reveals dilemmas between individual rights and
communal benefits. For example, clinical trials funded by Western
pharmaceutical companies benefit and exploit participants in
low-income countries; measures to control the spread of Covid-19
protected and restricted individuals; and international differences in
assisted dying legislation largely depend on how much a jurisdiction
values individual autonomy. Such dilemmas are viewed through a
philosophical bioethics/public health ethics lens.
Third, global health will be explored from a sociological and
humanistic perspective, emphasizing how health is shaped by global
interdependencies, power relations, and cultural meanings. Moving
beyond biomedical paradigms, the sociology of health can highlight the
social, political, and epistemological dimensions of illness, care,
and inequality. In addition, Graphic Medicine as an innovative visual
and narrative approach to representing experiences of vulnerability
and global crisis, will be introduced.
*Topics*will be selected reflecting participants’ interests and may
include:
·History of efforts to account for what causes public health
disparities, and what makes a disparity an injustice/inequity in need
of intervention
·Efforts to theorize how various types of social oppression relate to
health injustices and the amelioration of those injustices
·Role of advocacy in public health, including limits on the roles of
public health experts in crafting social policies around issues such
as immigration and climate change
·Ethics of clinical trials by Western pharmaceutical companies that
take place in low-income countries
·Justification for liberty-limiting measures to control the spread of
Covid-19 around the globe
·International differences in forms of assisted dying and which, if
any, are justifiable.
·The conceptual evolution from Public Health to One Health and
Planetary Health, focusing on how sociological approaches reframe
health as a relational and systemic phenomenon
·Postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, questioning how global
health reproduces colonial hierarchies and epistemic injustices
·Visual storytelling: how comics and graphic narratives contribute to
understanding emotional labour, care, and social inequality in health
**
**
*Lecturers*:
*Stephen Holland (University of York)*
Stephen Holland is a Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and
Health Sciences, University of York.
Stephen’s main research interests are in ethics, including moral and
political philosophy, bioethics, and public health ethics. As well as
numerous articles, he is the author of ‘Bioethics: A Philosophical
Introduction’ and ‘Public Health Ethics’, both published by Polity,
and ‘Ethics and Governance of Public Health Information’, published by
Rowman & Littlefield. He is currently working on a book on assisted
dying, due to be published by Polity next year.
*Veronica Moretti (University of Bologna)*
Veronica Moretti is an Associate Professor at the University of
Bologna and a member of the University Bioethics Committee. Her main
research interests lie in the field of creative and participatory
methods within the sociology of health and illness, and in the
intersections between technology and human practices, with a specific
emphasis on digital health theories.
She is co-coordinator of the ESA Research Network 22 Sociology of Risk
and Uncertainties, a board member of the European Society for Health
and Medical Sociology (ESHMS), and one of the founders of Graphic
Medicine Italia. Her latest publication, The Social Genre of Comics
(Palgrave, 2025), investigates how comics can function as a social and
epistemological genre within the humanities and social sciences.
**
**
**
*Sean A. Valles (Michigan State University)*
Sean A. Valles, PhD, is Professor and Director of the Michigan State
University Center for Bioethics and Social Justice and Director of
Learning Environment for the College of Human Medicine.
Dr. Valles is a philosopher of health specializing in the ethical and
evidentiary complexities of how social contexts combine to create
patterns of inequitable health disparities. His work includes studying
the challenges of responsibly using race and ethnicity concepts in
monitoring health disparities, scrutinizing the rhetoric of the
COVID-19 pandemic as an ‘unprecedented’ problem that could not be
prepared for, and examining how biomedicine meshes with public health
and population health.
Dr. Valles is author of the 2018 book “Philosophy of Population
Health: Philosophy for a New Public Health Era.” He is also co-editor
of the Oxford University Press book series "Bioethics for Social
Justice.” Dr. Valles received his PhD in history and philosophy of
science from Indiana University Bloomington.
**
*Application form and further information*:
https://summerschool-ivc.univie.ac.at/application/
<https://summerschool-ivc.univie.ac.at/application/>
USS-SWC operates under the academic supervision of an International
Program Committee of distinguished philosophers, historians, and
scientists. Its members represent the scientific fields in the scope
of USS-SWC, make contact to their home universities and will also
support acknowledgement of courses taken by the students. The annual
summer school is organised by the Institute Vienna Circle of the
University of Vienna.
https://wienerkreis.univie.ac.at/ <https://wienerkreis.univie.ac.at/>
Find information about our exchange programme with Duke University (North
Carolina) here:
https://international.univie.ac.at/en/international-cooperation/university-…
<https://international.univie.ac.at/en/international-cooperation/university-wide-partnership-agreements/north-america/>
*Inquiries:*
__
_Administrator:_
Zarah Weiss
Institute Vienna Circle
Alser Straße 23/32
1080 Wien
summerschool.ivc(a)univie.ac.at <mailto:summerschool.ivc@univie.ac.at>
_Scientific director:_
Georg Schiemer
Institute Vienna Circle
Alser Straße 23/32
1080 Wien
georg.schiemer(a)univie.ac.at <mailto:georg.schiemer@univie.ac.at>