Dates: 29 - 30 October 2026
Location: Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, CCO - Auditorium
The workshop will address the invisibility and epistemically unjust representation of Eastern Europe in global health debates. To this day, global health research has largely treated Europe as a homogeneous entity and equated it with its Western parts, disregarding the continent’s East, its sociohistorically specific health challenges, and marginalising its scholarship. These patterns have been reinforced by reliance on conceptual frameworks developed outside Europe, particularly in the United States. Given that these frameworks do not recognise Eastern Europeans as structurally vulnerable populations with context-specific health needs, they are ill-suited to capture the resulting disparities and their root causes, as well as identify appropriate strategies for their mitigation. These issues have recently acquired renewed urgency since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has displaced millions of people, caused widespread annihilation of life, and inflicted mass disability while exacerbating pre-existing intergenerational trauma. Such developments call for major epistemic shifts in global health debates.
Recognising that epistemically just approaches to health challenges require research and policy leadership from affected populations, the workshop will bring together a transregional group of experts from Europe’s East and researchers in dialogue with them. Foregrounding the sociopolitical structures that produce the European East–West health divide, we will discuss a broad range of concerns. These span the socioeconomic peripheralisation and resource extraction of the region, trajectories of economic and forced migration, unequal resources available for East-European healthcare systems, and the integration of the concerns of Europe’s East with similarly peripheralised societies of the global South(s)—focusing in particular on shared socio-historical experiences with Central Asia.
Confirmed speakers include: Tereza Hendl, Joanna Karolina Malinowska, Valentyna Mazhbits, Botakoz Kassymbekova, Daniel James, Dora Vargha, Judit Sándor, Bogdan Cristian Iacob, Petra Ezzeddine, Joanna Talewicz, Lois Orton, Olga Fuseini, and Dominika Pszczółkowska-Mościcka.
Key objectives:
- The engagement of Europe’s East as a region that belongs in global health debates
- A robust, epistemically just investigation of East-European health inequities and their sociopolitical determinants
- An in-depth discussion of the need for epistemic repair and strategies for remedying persistent health inequities
- The strengthening of interdisciplinary and transregional networks of scholars working on East-European health in global dialogues
We welcome and encourage participation from early-career and senior researchers across a range of health-related disciplines, as well as health professionals with insights into European East-West inequities and their global intersections.
Information about the workshop and registration
The hybrid workshop is limited to 30 in-person participants. Interested applicants are therefore asked to register by 9 October. The registration includes contact information as well as a motivation statement of 200-250 words. Selected participants will be notified by 15 October.
Participation in the workshop is free. However, participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation.
The event is held as a part of a broader series of follow-up discussions organised by the RUTA Association’s Initiative for Public and Global Health, that was recently launched in Ukraine by Dr Tereza Hendl and Dr Joanna Karolina Malinowska.