VENUE: Widang Hall(Bldg. 527) 616, Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
DATES: 10. April - 12. April, 2026
We forget more than we remember. But what does it mean to remember past pandemics and prepare for the unknown? What if preparedness inherently involves both remembering and forgetting?
Hosted by Yonsei University's Department of Cultural Anthropology, Pandemic Pedagogies: Lessons from Global Disruptions confronts these paradoxes through an incisive exploration of pandemics. It reflects on what we have learned and forgotten from the COVID-19 pandemic, and connects these insights to other, often overlooked, epidemics.
Presenting key findings from four years of collaborative research on mobility regimes and pandemic preparedness—funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung—this conference opens new dialogues on urban infrastructure, affective politics, and aspirations for decolonizing anthropology and global health. If sustained global collaboration is essential for understanding pandemic experiences, what kinds of labor and modes of working are viable and just? By sharing how researchers at different stages and positionalities have influenced and supported one another, this conference envisions coalitional ways of learning and thinking together with the not-yet-fully-known.
During the conference period, 10 April to 11 April, the exhibition “Viral Atmosphere,” which visually archives the research activities and findings of the research group, will be held at Widang Hall 317, CLIO Institute for Social Development Studies. The archive can be viewed at the following address: https://www.viral-atmospheres.com/
Hosted by the Department of Cultural Anthropology, Yonsei University
Co-hosted by Korean Society for Medical Anthropology, Institute for the Comparative Studies of Society and Culture, and CLIO Institute for Social Development Studies
Sponsored by Volkswagen Stiftung, and Yonsei University