Convenors
Marcin W. Smietana, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
marcin.smietana@unive.it (corresponding scholar)
Alessandra Brigo, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
This panel invites papers drawing on clinical ethnography and related approaches, including medical anthropology, medical sociology, the sociology and anthropology of health and illness, and science and technology studies (STS). We are interested in how ethnographic research can illuminate the everyday practices, relationships, technologies, and forms of knowledge through which clinical worlds are produced and experienced.
Rather than treating the clinic simply as a backdrop for medicine, we invite contributions that examine it as a dynamic social, material, technological, and institutional space in its own right. How are clinical practices organised and negotiated in everyday life? How do patients, clinicians, technologies, protocols, and institutions mutually shape one another? What forms of knowledge, expertise, care, uncertainty, and authority emerge through clinical encounters? What can contemporary ethnographies of healthcare reveal about broader societal assumptions and ongoing social change, and what can clinical ethnography show us if we treat it as a lens through which to view society?
For instance, studies of reproductive health demonstrate how access to practices such as abortion, contraception, surrogacy, human embryo research, or state-funded in vitro fertilisation is highly contingent upon geopolitical context. This highlights how law and culture shape clinical boundaries and the very possibilities of care.
Furthermore, conducting ethnography in clinical settings raises critical methodological and ethical questions. How do researchers navigate access to highly regulated and often sensitive environments? How are relationships with clinicians, patients, and other actors established and sustained? How do questions of trust, positionality, confidentiality, and vulnerability shape the ethnographic encounter? And how is knowledge co-produced between researchers and their participants?
We particularly welcome contributions that engage deeply with clinical life, alongside the possibilities and challenges of doing ethnography in these settings. Papers may explore clinical encounters, forms of care and expertise, diagnostic and therapeutic practices, technologies and infrastructures, or the production and circulation of medical knowledge. We also invite reflexive accounts of fieldwork, including questions of access, relationship-building, ethics, positionality, and the collaborative or contested production of ethnographic knowledge.
The panel is convened by members of the European Research Council-funded project ‘Pregnancy Dating Challenges: Technologies and Unequal Geographies of Abortion and Childbirth Care (PregDaT).’
Open questions
- How are clinical practices organised and negotiated in everyday life?
- How do patients, clinicians, technologies, protocols, and institutions shape one another?
- What forms of knowledge, expertise, care, uncertainty, and authority emerge through clinical encounters?
- What can contemporary ethnographies of healthcare reveal about broader societal assumptions and ongoing social change, and what can clinical ethnography show us if we treat it as a lens through which to view society?
- How do researchers gain access to highly regulated and often sensitive environments?
- How are relationships with clinicians, patients, and other actors established and sustained?
- How do questions of trust, positionality, confidentiality, and vulnerability shape ethnographic encounters?
- And how is knowledge co-produced between researchers and those with whom they work?
Keywords
clinical ethnography, healthcare, medicine, health and illness, science and technology
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
clinical ethnography, healthcare ethnography, medical anthropology / anthropology of health and illness, medical sociology / sociology of health and illness, science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology of reproduction
References
Blell, Mwenza (2018). British Pakistani Muslim Masculinity, (In)Fertility, and the Clinical Encounter, Medical Anthropology 37(2): 117-130, https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2017.1364736
Cerezuela González, Ana; Remorini, Carolina; Marre, Diana (2026). Dialogues of obstetric risk in the first trimester of pregnancy: Insights from a hospital ethnography. Social Science & Medicine 392: 118985, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.118985.
De Zordo, Silvia; Mishtal, Joanna; Zanini, Giulia; Gerdts, Caitlin (2023). “The first difficulty is time”: The impact of gestational age limits on reproductive health and justice in the context of cross-border travel for abortion care in Europe. Social Science & Medicine 321: 115760, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115760.
Ferrero, Laura; Vargas, Cristina (2023). Rituali in movimento e servizi sanitari: Prospettive di dialogo interculturale. In: C. Piciocchi, D. Strazzari, Percorsi Interculturali, Quaderni della Facoltà di Giurisprundenza 69: 117-142. Università di Trento.
Franklin, Sarah; and Roberts, Celia (2007). Born and Made: En Ethnography of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis. Princeton University Press.
McKnight, Ulla (2016). The challenge of HIV within an HIV specialist antenatal clinic in London: providing and receiving care within an HIV diaspora. University of Sussex. Thesis. https://hdl.handle.net/10779/uos.23473859.v1
Mol, Annemarie (2002). The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice. Duke University Press, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822384151
Smietana, Marcin; Zanini, Giulia; Brigo, Alessandra (2026). ‘It was going to be two days and it’s been a month’: A feminist critique of legal time limits for the process of abortion. Blog post on Doing Feminist Legal Work project site, 30 September. https://dflw.ie/it-was-going-to-be-two-days-and-its-been-a-month-a-feminist-critique-of-legal-time-limits-for-the-process-of-abortion/
Thompson, Charis (2005). Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. MIT Press.
Van der Geest, Sjaak; and Finkler, Kaja (2004). Hospital ethnography: introduction, Social Science & Medicine 59 (10): 1995-2001, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.03.004.
Convenors’ bio
Dr. Marcin W. Smietana is a research fellow within the ERC-funded study ‘Pregnancy Dating Challenges (PregDaT)’. As part of this study, he is conducting a clinical ethnography of abortion and childbirth care in the United Kingdom. He is also an affiliated lecturer at Cambridge University’s Department of Sociology, where he was previously a senior research associate in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group. He carried out studies of queer and LGBTQ+ reproduction in the UK, USA, Spain and Poland.
Dr. Alessandra Brigo is a research fellow at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy), and an associate researcher at the Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM). She holds a PhD in Public Health from the Institute of Social Medicine (Brazil), and a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy). She has been affiliated to several universities, including the New York University and City University of London, and she has worked for several institutions and NGOs. Her research focuses on sexual and reproductive rights, public health, gender, and social movements.