Bodies of Evidence: Fat Across Disciplines

Description

The current fascination with obesity poses many interesting problems. Not least of which remains a question of definition: What is obesity? The obese body is on the one hand regarded to be somewhat self-evident and yet also evokes an increasingly complex range of explanations and explorations. This conference seeks to bring together academics from a broad range of disciplines to examine the obese body as a case study of both the contested nature of evidence and as a site for the construction of interdisciplinary evidence and problem-solving. It will seek to highlight the different ways of thinking about, researching and 'doing' obesity and will ask what is it about the obese body that makes it a particularly novel and problematic site for the construction of evidence.

Confirmed Speakers include:
# Professor Ian Hacking (University of Toronto)
# Dr Katie LeBesco (Marymount Manhatten College)
# Professor Don Kulick (New York University)
# Professor Anne E Becker (Harvard Medical School)
# Dr Virginia Chang (University of Pennsylvania)
# Dr Petra Jonvallen (Linkopings Universitet, Sweden)
# Dr Karen Throsby (University of Warwick)
# Megan Clinch (BIOS, LSE)
# Dr Ana Carden Coyne (University of Manchester)
# Professor Simon Marvin (University of Salford)

Convener: Shirlene Badger (University of Cambridge)