[Commlist] CFP: Illness Narrative Retold - Diversity, Temporality, and Digitization

*Call for Conference Participation, Aarhus University, 1–2 June 2026 *

*Illness Narrative Retold – Diversity, Temporality, and Digitization*

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Web: https://conferences.au.dk/illness-narrative-retold 
<https://conferences.au.dk/illness-narrative-retold>

*Keynotes and provisional titles*

• Angela Woods, Professor of Medical Humanities, Durham University: 
“Voice and Testimony in the Age of Generative AI”

• Danielle Spencer, Senior Lecturer, Columbia University Narrative 
Medicine Programme: “Metagnosis: Illness Narratives and Knowledges Retold”

• Stefania Vicari, Senior Lecturer in Digital Sociology, University of 
Sheffield: “Social Media of Health and Illness: Platform, Narratives and 
Values”

*Invited speakers for panels on gender, crip narratives, mental illness, 
and medical humanities*

• Ida Melander, Senior Lecturer, Örebro University

• Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø, Associate Professor, University of 
Southern Denmark

• Karen Hvidtfeldt, Professor, University of Southern Denmark

• Katarina Bernhardsson, Associate Professor, Lund University

• Peter Simonsen, Professor, University of Southern Denmark

• Nora Simonhjell, Professor, University of Agder

• Jane Ege Møller, Associate Professor, Aarhus University

• Lasse Raaby Gammelgaard, Associate Professor, Aarhus University

• Anders Juhl Rasmussen, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen

Stories of illness are often understood as attempts to tame, navigate, 
and make sense of the ‘wreckage’ or ‘biographical disruption’ that the 
experience of serious illness or patienthood may occasion. Within 
illness narrative research, the storyteller is seen as a seriously 
wounded individual trying to master the disruptive existential event of 
falling ill – frequently with the (sometimes impossible) hope of 
restoring health. This dominant “crisis model” has shaped scholarly 
assumptions about what an illness narrative is, who can tell it, and for 
what reasons, as well as how to approach it analytically.

Against the background of this well-established tradition, this two-day 
interdisciplinary conference asks the key questions of where the 
academic field of illness narrative research is currently moving and how 
new experiences, discourses, mediations, and technologies shape the way 
illness narratives are told today. In other words, we wish to explore 
the multiplicity of ways in which illness narratives are currently 
understood, articulated, circulated, and used.

The conference particularly focuses on how new ideas, practices, and 
configurations of illness narratives emerge in cultural contexts shaped 
by anticipatory health technologies and the growing prevalence of 
chronic conditions, neurodiversity, mental illness, and increased 
medicalization. How are illness narratives crafted and shared if 
suffering is not only an acute and dramatic event but also something 
that lingers, changes from day to day, or looms as a potential future? 
What does it mean when illness and health become increasingly entangled 
and difficult to separate, when the narrator is not a patient in any 
conventional sense, or when diagnoses are replaced by risks and 
probabilities? Another focus area for the conference is the public 
circulation of illness narratives on social media, in broadcast media, 
and on streaming platforms, which turn individual stories of illness and 
suffering into public concerns and raise the question of story 
ownership. This concern is also pertinent in forms of distributed 
storytelling where experiences and narratives are shared across, e.g., 
families, generations, and intimate relations. In this vein, we also 
welcome papers that investigate how illness

narratives are told by multiple narrators, by relatives, or by 
(genetically) at-risk subjects entangled in family histories of pain. 
Furthermore, we encourage contributions focusing on critical approaches 
to the metaphors or narrative templates involved in telling illness 
narratives, and on how illness narratives are increasingly deployed in 
professional contexts (e.g., health education) or as creative tools to 
foster community-building (e.g., in creative patient writing).

*We invite contributions that address but are not limited to the 
following themes:*

• Critical approaches to illness narratives

• Chronic illness

• Mental illness

• Illness narratives on (genetic) risk and risk technologies

• Disability and crip narratives

• Neurodivergence as illness narrative

• Contested illness narratives

• Illness narratives and epidemics

• Illness and story ownership

• Gender and illness narrative

• Metaphors in illness narratives

• Temporality

• Invisible illness

• Shared, collective, or distributed illness narratives

• Visuality in illness narratives (e.g., graphic novels, zines)

• Illness narratives in journalism and legacy media

• The role of social media, online communities, and digital platforms in 
shaping and

circulating illness narratives

• Illness narratives as tools of professional or organisational learning

• Creative writing and illness narrative

• Collaborations between academics and practitioners in understanding 
the importance of illness narratives

• Illness narratives told by health professionals

• Illness narratives told by, through, or with relatives

*Practical information*

• Conference dates: 1–2 June 2026

• Abstract submission deadline: 01 February 2026

• Notification of acceptance: 15 February 2026

• Abstract length: Max. 300 words

• Submission: Send abstracts and a short bio (max. 100 words) to 
(noraksn /at/ cc.au.dk)

• Organisers: Professor Carsten Stage and Assistant Professor 
Ann-Katrine Schmidt Nielsen

• Funding: The conference is funded by the research project Genetic 
hauntings. Pre-patient narratives in the era of direct-to-consumer 
genetic testing (IRDF 2023–2026).

If you are joining the conference, please also consider attending the 
large ISSN-conference in Aarhus later that week. It is organised by our 
great colleagues at the School of Communication and Culture, AU: 
https://conferences.au.dk/narrative2026 
<https://conferences.au.dk/narrative2026>

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