Summer
School
Call
for Applications
(Deadline:
February 15, 2026)
24th
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/
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/
Find
information about our exchange programme with Duke
University (North
Carolina)
here:
Inquiries:
Administrator:
Zarah
Weiss
Institute
Vienna Circle
Alser
Straße 23/32
1080
Wien
Scientific
director:
Georg
Schiemer
Institute
Vienna Circle
Alser
Straße 23/32
1080
Wien