Mirko
Winkel

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Mirko Winkel is the coordinator of the mLAB. The artist and curator teaches at the University of Bern and other places with the aim of synthesizing art with scientific research and socio-political concerns.

Susan
Thieme

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Susan Thieme is professor of Critical Sustainability Studies at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern. She brought the Global Science Film Festival to Bern and co-developed the Social Learning Video Method. She is co-founder of the mLAB.  MORE

Carolin
Schurr

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Carolin Schurr is professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. As a feminist geographer, she has developed and experimented with affectual and visual methods to grasp the emotional effects of globalization processes on our intimate lives. She is co-founder of the mLAB.  MORE

Alexander
Vorbrugg

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Alexander Vorbrugg is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. His research interests include visual forms of research and science communication. He is part of the coordination group of the mLAB. MORE

Laura
Perler

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Laura Perler is a postdoctoral researcher in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. In her research she investigates inequalities in relation to reproductive technologies and the Swiss asylum system. In her projects she uses audiovisual approaches and collaborates with artists. Together with Mirko Winkel, she is currently organizing a traveling exhibition on egg donation. She is part of the coordination group of the mLAB. MORE

Stefan
Brönnimann

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Stefan Brönnimann is a professor in Climatology at the University of Bern. His research focuses on weather and climate reconstruction, climate models, climate dynamics, effects of volcanic eruptions on climate and climate and society interactions. MORE

Elisabeth
Militz

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Elisabeth Militz is an Assistant Professor for Social and Digital Geographies at the University of Innsbruck. As a feminist political and cultural geographer, her focus lies on global/intimate relations and digital transformations. She experiments with affectual and feminist digital methodologies for human geographies. MORE

Adrien
Mestrot

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Adrien Mestrot is a professor in Soil Science at the University of Bern. Part of his research topics is analyzing the biogeochemistry of soils under global change to improve environmental health and food production.  MORE

Nora
Komposch

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Nora Komposch is a PhD student and assistant in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. Her research interests are geographies of the body, care and reproduction, migration and labor, and politics of the global intimate. MORE

Prisca Pfammatter

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Prisca Pfammatter (she/her) is a PhD student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern. Her research explores the experiences of queer farmworkers in Switzerland, using dance-based methodologies to examine the intersections of gender, sex, sexuality, and social sustainability in agriculture.

Johanna
Paschen

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Johanna Paschen is a PhD student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. Her research interests include social and environmental justice, transdisciplinarity and artistic research. In cooperation with the Academy of the Arts Bern, she is involved with the research project EcoArtLab. MORE

Luca
Tschiderer

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Luca Tschiderer is a PhD student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. His research focuses on alternative practices of work in health- and care related contexts. As part of his PhD project he uses social learning videos as a participatory method towards workers inquiry. MORE

Sarah
Hartmann

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Sarah Hartmann is a Postdoc student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. Her research looks at issues around work, transnational mobilities and future transformations in healthcare from a critical sustainability perspective. MORE

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Susan Thieme
Transdisciplinarity
future of work
health care
translocality
Luca Tschiderer
Sarah Hartmann

Health Care Unbound

A Transnational Perspective on the Future of the World of Work in Health Care

The health sector in Switzerland shows the global trend of economization, oriented towards market-driven modes of governance. Cost-effectiveness started to dominate other, rather public, and common good-related criteria. The recruitment of health workers (e.g. doctors, nurses, midwives, technical staff) from abroad allows for shifting costs of medical education and training and circulations of knowledge and technologies to budgets of other countries. The outcome of this overemphasis on economic indicators is part of a more general tendency of the commodification of work, health and care-related knowledge and technologies and raises questions about capacities and capabilities for social, economic, ecological innovation, emancipation, and justice in search for more sustainable ‘work’. The effects of the increasing commodification trends on the quality of work as perceived by the main target group of a health institution – the patients – is also widely unknown.

Therefore, this research project addresses processes, actors and institutions related to the com-modification of work, health and care-related knowledge (incl. professional education and training) and technologies from a multi-scalar and translocal perspective. We aim at co-creating knowledge and contributing to debates about the future of the world of work in health care, based on inter- and transdisciplinary social learning among key actors of the health care system and us as researchers integrating media, art and digital technologies jointly with the mLAB.

To empirically capture those questions the research should take Switzerland as an entry point and remain open to the translocal linkages the research will reveal.

The following events and projects part of Health Care Unbound:

Workshop on Creative Methods in Health Geographies

Workshop on Transitional Justice

Residency: Geography of Ghosts

 

Also look at our earlier research and publications:

Research projects

Narrating care-work: Negotiating geographical research and artistic practice in transdisciplinary teaching

Economic Rationalities and Notions of ‘Good Cure and Care’

Negotiating social differences and power geometries among healthcare professionals in a Swiss hospital

Analytical and Methodological Disruptions: Implications of an Institutional Ethnography in a Swiss Acute Hospital