This research is supported by the Czech
Science Foundation GAČR EXPRO.
Intimate States: New Histories of Medicine, Welfare, and Care under Socialism
Our conference took place:
- 28-29 May 2026, Prague, Czech Republic
Conference organizers:
- Dr. Alexander Langstaff, New York University
- Dr. Kateřina Lišková, ExpertTurn, Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Health, social welfare, and the organization of family and social life have long been central themes in the history of socialist societies. This conference examined how intimacy, understood both as a concept and as a social practice, can offer new perspectives on the ways socialist institutions fostered, reshaped, or constrained relationships between parents and children, patients and practitioners, and citizens and the state.
Participants explored how attention to intimacy transforms our understanding of medicine, welfare, and everyday life under state socialism. Contributions focused on diverse institutional settings, including hospitals, clinics, maternity wards, childcare facilities, retirement homes, psychiatric institutions, and other sites where care and expertise intersected.
The conference particularly highlighted the relationship between professional expertise, caregiving practices, and emotional labour. Presentations drew on a wide range of historical sources, including official records, personal diaries, documentary films, and family archives, to reveal how intimacy was created, negotiated, and experienced within socialist institutions.
Discussions addressed themes such as:
- intimacy and impersonality in medical and welfare institutions;
- tensions between professional expertise and caring relationships;
- intimacy as a space of negotiation, resistance, and adaptation;
- the production of knowledge through everyday encounters between practitioners and patients;
- cross-disciplinary exchanges among psychiatry, psychology, paediatrics, social work, and related fields;
- transnational circulations of medical and welfare knowledge across and beyond socialist states.
The conference brought together international scholars working on the histories of medicine, welfare, care, expertise, and state socialism, creating new opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration.
