Dr Costanza Torre
Research Fellow
CAMHRA at EASA 2026
Researchers, fellows and grant recipients from CAMHRA contributed to this year’s European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) conference (Poznań, Poland, 21–24 July)
Under the theme “Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World“, the conference brought together anthropologists from across Europe and beyond to explore contemporary social, political and methodological challenges. CAMHRA researchers participated in panels, roundtables and collaborative events spanning mental health, care, art, ethics and community-based research.
Dr Costanza Torre
As discussant for Allegra Lab’s roundtable, Ethnographies of Joy: Snippets from a Definitionless Dictionary, Costanza and fellow participants presented preliminary results from a collaborative three-day writing process preceding the conference.
Costanza also co-convened Panel 123, For a Darker Anthropology: Redefining the Epistemological and Moral Commitment of a Community of Practice, which explored questions of ethics and the experience of conducting politically engaged anthropological research within the neoliberal university. As part of the panel, she presented a paper co-authored with Dr Henni Alava (Tampere University), Practising a Darker Anthropology: Reflections on Entanglements of Exhaustion, Knowledge, and Capital in Academia.
Reflecting on the event, Costanza noted that the panel “went incredibly well and generated an incredibly rich discussion”. Many attendees commented on the quality of the conversations, with some describing it as one of the strongest panels they attended during the conference. CAMHRA New Direction Grant Awardee Dr Amir Massoumian also participated in the panel and, according to Costanza, gave “an exceptional paper” that attracted extensive discussion and questions from the audience.
In addition, Costanza presented Unsustainable Medicines: Antipsychotics, Hydroxyurea, and the Everyday Labour of Chronic Care in Uganda and Liberia in the panel Healthcare in a Polarised World: Chronicity and Fracture through Perspectives from the Global South, which examined experiences of chronic illness and care across Global South contexts.
Dr Kiara Wickremasinghe
Kiara presented doctoral research on Peer-supported Open Dialogue in the UK NHS formed part of the roundtable Structuring Affects in Black and White: On Care and its Others, convened by Dr Mauricio Najarro and Dr Charles Briggs. The roundtable examined intersections of race, affect and (in)communicability, suggesting that while polarisation can intensify communicative breakdowns, it may also create opportunities for new affective and political possibilities.
Drawing on racialised encounters within NHS mental health services, Kiara explored how the deeply hierarchical and boundaried nature of healthcare bureaucracies can cause incommunicabilities to emerge as affective responses fluctuating between humour and fury. While professional hierarchies are often the most visible forms of hierarchy within NHS settings, she argued that these are entangled with hierarchies of race, gender and disability that can be difficult to disentangle. She concluded by asking whether it is the anthropologist’s task to make the incommunicable communicable, and what ethical challenges such a project might involve.
Kiara also presented postdoctoral research on Sri Lanka’s youth mental health crisis in the panel Performing Possibilities in a Polarised World: Anthropological Perspectives on Artistic Practices, convened by Dr Gili Hammer, Dr Helena Wulff and Dr Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston.
Drawing on her methodological and interventionist project Open to Opera, she explored what opera can reveal about young people’s experiences of emotional distress and social inequality. While western classical opera is often perceived as a polarising art form that excludes marginalised populations, Kiara argued that resituating opera within the Global South can challenge the form’s racist and elitist histories while opening up new ways for young people to articulate experiences of distress through a different cultural space. Her presentation included the screening of an original composition developed from young people’s lived experiences of loneliness.
Dr Priya Sajjad
Priya Sajjad presented her paper, Community as Anti-Policy: Boundary-Spanning Roles and the Displacement of Care in England’s Mental Health System, in the panel Anti-Policy in an Increasingly Polarised World: Constructive Governance or Governing through Chaos?, convened by Prof Cris Shore and Prof Susan Wright, with Prof Steven Sampson as discussant.
Drawing on five months of ethnographic fieldwork with Community Connectors in Brent, north-west London, Priya examined England’s policy commitment to shift care from hospitals into community settings. Community Connectors are recruited for their knowledge of local communities and support residents in navigating services, understanding information and overcoming linguistic, digital and administrative barriers.
Beginning at the Pakistani Community Centre in Willesden Green, the paper explored encounters with needs relating to bereavement, housing, immigration, illness and financial insecurity. One food bank volunteer’s question, “What do we do besides offer parsnips?”, captured a central tension running through the research. While community provision can bring support closer to people, it cannot in itself create continuity across fragmented services.
The discussion that followed raised broader questions about brokers, mediators and outreach workers, the meanings of referral and waiting, and whether anti-policy offers a useful lens for understanding both the possibilities and limitations of community-based care.
Dr Nora Wuttke
Nora Wuttke participated in several events connected to the Anthropology and the Arts Network (ANTART). Nora’s contributions explored themes that intersect with CAMHRA’s interests in clinical spaces, care and creative research methods.
Nora took part in the lab Dialogic Fragments of the Contemporary: Building a Critical Glossary across Anthropology and Art and presented the paper Artful ethnography in practice: sketching care between buildings and bailiwicks in the panel The Potential of Art: Toward an Entangled Anthropology for the 21st Century. Her work drew on her broader book project and explored the possibilities of artful ethnography in practice.
Together, these contributions reflected the breadth of CAMHRA’s engagement with anthropology and mental health, from community care and healthcare infrastructures to artistic practice, ethics and the politics of knowledge production. EASA 2026 provided a valuable opportunity to share research, develop collaborations and contribute to ongoing conversations about anthropology’s role in an increasingly polarised world.
People
Dr Kiara Wickremasinghe
Graduate Teaching Assistant & Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Priya Sajjad
CAMHRA Anthropology in Action Research Fellow
Dr Nora Wuttke
Research Associate
