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Yearly Archives: 2015
Special issue of European Health Psychologist: Men’s Health
Catrinel Craciun, Babes-Bolyai University and FreieUniversität Berlin
WSC 2015 slides and programme available to download
You can now view and download the conference brochure for Weight Stigma Conference 2015 here. In addition, slides are available for most of the talks and presentations and can be accessed on the same page.
Weight Stigma listserv
I’d like to inform you about a Yahoo Groups weight stigma listserv that we started after the first WSC in 2013.
Weight Stigma Special Interest Group
A community of researchers, healthcare professionals, and anybody else with an interest in weight stigma. The group will encompass topics including research, practice, and public policy, and provide a forum for discussion, debate, and networking.
The group isn’t very active yet but it’d be good to get some more discussions going on there. Also, there have been a handful of interesting job openings, calls for proposals etc, of late, and from now on I will post them to the Yahoo listserv rather than to the conference mailing list (the one you’re signed up to if you’re reading this in your email). The conference mailing list will be used mainly for conference-related notices.
Feel free to also post your notices over there.
Hope to see you over on Yahoo! https://uk.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/weightstigma/info
Angela
London, UK: Seminar 22nd October
The following seminar may be of interest to some.
The British Sociological Association Food Study Group & the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU), UCL Institute of Education, will be delighted to welcome staff and students to this lunchtime seminar. Please note this is a special seminar outside of the usual TCRU Tuesday lunchtime schedule.
Name: Megan Warin
Title: Fleshing out fat: materialisations of fatness in a disadvantaged Australian suburb
Date and time: Thursday 22nd October, 1-2pm TCRU Library, 27/28 Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AA
Summary: Foregrounding the material properties and agentive capacities of fat, this paper explores experiences of expanding, maintaining or diminishing body sizes to give substance to the different enactments of fat. Drawing on fieldwork in an underprivileged community in South Australia that is represented as ‘obesogenic’, I detail how bodies become fat and what fat can do for bodies. In places of situational poverty I argue that fat can be characterized as enhancing wellbeing and as a material resource that acts to safeguard or augment bodily survival. This paper thus moves away from representational accounts of fat, and builds upon ontological and new materialist explorations of bodies (Colls 2007; Bennett 2010; Warin et al. 2015), focusing on ‘embodied topographies’ and agentive capacities of corpulence. Extending the question of what fat does to ethnographic accounts of bodies, I ‘flesh out fat’, its multiplicities and inconsistencies, to demonstrate how the productive potential of fat ̶ to express health, ‘to get stuff’, to ‘protect’ oneself or repel others ̶ materializes in and from bodies. Such understanding is important for broadening how we conceptualise fat – of how fat intertwines with other humans and things – and challenging current obesity prevention programs that engage in what Mol (2002) refers to as ‘ontological singularity’ – in which fat is seen as simply a substance to be restricted.
Megan Warin is a social anthropologist and Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide. She is currently an Australia Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow and her research interests span theories of embodiment and new materialisms, intersections of class and gender in experiences of obesity, public understanding of obesity science (epigenetics and developmental origins of health and disease), and desire and denial in eating disorders. Recent publications include: (2015) Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities. Social Science & Medicine. 128:309-15; (2015) Epigenetics and Obesity: The Reproduction of Habitus through Intracellular and Social Environments. Body & Society (doi: 10.1177/1357034X15590485; (2014) Material feminism, obesity science and the limits of discursive critique. Body &Society (doi: 10.1177/1357034X14537320).
For any queries and to register your attendance please email: tcru@ioe.ac.uk
This event has been made possible with the financial support of the British Sociological Association Food Study Group and the voluntary assistance of its members. The BSA exists to promote Sociology. We are also grateful for the support of TCRU in hosting this seminar
Postdoctoral scholar position in Weight Bias, University of Calgary
Area: Psychosocial Aspects of Body Weight: Weight Bias
Duration: 2 years
Start date: ~January 2016
Annual Stipend: $50 000
The University of Calgary is accepting applications for a Postdoctoral Scholar in weight bias. Supervisors are: Dr. Shelly Russell-‐Mayhew, Werklund School of Education, Counselling Psychology (mkrussel@ucalgary.ca); Dr. Kristin von Ranson, Clinical Psychology (kvonrans@ucalgary.ca); and Dr. Lindsay McLaren,Community Health Sciences (lmclaren@ucalgary.ca).
Job Description:
A full-time Postdoctoral Scholar opportunity in weight bias, which is defined as negative attitudes, beliefs, assumptions and judgments toward individuals based on their body weight, is available at the University of Calgary, Canada, to begin on or about January 1, 2016. This PDS will participate in the development of six research areas that emerged from the March 2015 CIHR-‐funded Weight Bias Summit (which we hosted as a team) into provincial and national research teams that can design research with potential to reduce weight bias in health and education sectors. We have stakeholders across Canada anticipating research leadership from the U of C in six identified dimensions of weight bias, namely: 1) causes, 2) economic impact, 3) patient lived experiences, and 4) improved measurement, as well as 5) championing change (interventions), and 6) learning from other forms of discrimination. We have specific direction from and consensus of the leading researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the field in Canada and are primed to move forward with these six emerging interdisciplinary research teams. Our proposed PDS will coordinate, lead or co-‐lead, and expand on these areas of investigation in weight bias nationally by growing interdisciplinary teams and co-‐designing research with transformative potential across Canada.
Qualifications:
Requirements include: a recent PhD (no more than 5 years from degree completion) in a relevant social science discipline (e.g., psychology; population/public health; economics); or professional health degree (e.g., MD – no more than 10 years from degree completion); outstanding academic record and evidence of research productivity; and excellent written, analytical, and oral communication skills. The candidate will receive an annual stipend of $50,000 plus an extended health benefits plan. Limited reimbursement for relocation expenses may be available.
Application details:
Preliminary inquiries by e-‐mail are welcome. To apply, individuals should submit a CV, letter of interest
addressing goodness of fit, and 2 letters of recommendation by October 16, 2015 to Dr. Shelly Russell-‐Mayhew
@ mkrussel@ucalgary.ca. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled. We will accept queries after the deadline about the statusof the position. Applicants are thanked in advance for their interest, however, only those candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
Further information about the postdoctoral recruitment at the University of Calgary is available at http://ucalgary.ca/research/postdoc/future-‐postdocs.
About the University of Calgary
The University of Calgary is a leading Canadian university located in the nation’s most enterprising city. The university has a clear strategic direction to become one of Canada’s top five research universities by 2016, where innovative teaching and groundbreaking research go hand in hand, and where we fully engage the communities we both serve and lead. The strategy is called Eyes High, inspired by our Gaelic motto, which translates to ‘I will lift up my eyes.’
To succeed as one of Canada’s top universities, where new ideas are created, tested and applied through first-‐ class teaching and research, the University of Calgary needs more of the best minds in our classrooms and labs. We’re increasing our scholarly capacity by investing in people who want to change the world, bringing the best and brightest to Calgary to form a global intellectual hub and achieve advances that matter to everyone.
About Calgary
Named a cultural capital of Canada and one of the best places to live in the world, Calgary is a city of leaders – in business, community, philanthropy and volunteerism. Calgarians benefit from the strongest economy in the nation and enjoy more days of sunshine per year than any other major Canadian city. Calgary is less than an hour’s drive from the majestic Rocky Mountains and boasts the most extensive urban pathway and bikeway network in North America.
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given
priority. The University of Calgary respects, appreciates, and encourages diversity. ∞
1-day tickets available
By popular demand, 1-day tickets are now available for this year’s Weight Stigma Conference. Visit stigmaconference.com/registration-2015 to be taken to the ticketing website.
One week to go!!
It’s just one week until the 2015 Weight Stigma Conference in Reyjkavik, Iceland. There’s still time to register. If you’ve already registered, check out the Information for Delegates page for more information on accommodation, travel from the airport, and more. For tips on what to do while you’re there, the Visit Reyjavik website has lots of suggestions whatever your interests. Want someone to visit the Blue Lagoon with? Visit our Facebook page to ‘meet’ some of the other attendees or ask questions about Reykjavik and Iceland. See you there!
Funded PhD studentship, Liverpool, UK
One month to go
It’s just one month till the start of the 3rd Annual International Weight Stigma Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. If you haven’t looked at the programme lately there are a few additions:
- Lisa DuBreuil MSW, LICSW, of Massachusetts General Hospital will be running a session on weight stigma and weight loss surgery
- Harriet Brown, author and journalist, will be hosting a media bootcamp
- And we’ve added a Roundtable discussion on Day 1 to discuss the increasingly contentious issue of what is the best terminology to use when speaking about body size.
Visit the website to view the full programme, register, or check out practical details for your trip.
Wellcome Trust seeking funding committee members
This may be of interest to some. Application deadline is 9th September 2015.
From the Wellcome Trust:
We are seeking to recruit a pool of prospective committee members with expertise throughout our Science, Innovations, and Humanities & Social Science portfolios. We will draw from this pool to create new committees, to refresh membership of existing committees and to co-opt members to specific meetings.
You should have:
- International standing in your field, with an outstanding track record in research
- Extensive success in securing competitive funding or resourcing for your research programmes
- Significant experience in the review and assessment of research proposals or publications
- The ability to consider and critique research outside your immediate area
- Experience in conducting interviews, and the ability to question and solicit discussion in a fair manner.
Click here for more information.