Events
Deindustrialisation and health in the UK and beyond
Tuesday 25th February 2025
Newcastle University
Deindustrialisation remains a live issue for the UK, with policy discussions on addressing regional economic inequalities and the future of work in a post-industrial economy. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which deindustrialisation has affected health and wellbeing. This symposium will explore the legacies of disease and injury caused by industrial work. It will also explore how the process of deindustrialisation has changed economic outcomes, driving up financial insecurity and poverty, and in turn leading to poorer health outcomes in these communities.
This symposium is supported by funding from the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness.
We will be joined by Dr Gábor Scheiring, Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at Georgetown University Qatar. His research explores the political economy and lived experiences of contemporary economic transformations through quantitative, qualitative, and comparative methods. He focuses on how economic shocks create precarity, leading to mental and physical suffering, and how these processes impact democratic stability.
Dr Scheiring will present the keynote: "Shocks Without Therapy: Deaths of Despair in the U.S. and Eastern Europe".
The presentation offers a trans-Atlantic comparison of ‘deaths of despair’ in the United States and Eastern Europe’s postsocialist mortality crisis after 1990. Challenging existing explanations that treat these crises as exceptional and rely too heavily on cultural and supply-side factors, the presentation foregrounds the similarities in the harmful effects of economic shocks. Comparing Hungary (strong shock, strong therapy), Russia (strong shock, weak therapy) and the United States (prolonged medium shock, weak therapy), the presentation analyzes how shocks lead to psychosocial stress and harmful health behaviors and how policy therapies might offset the adverse effects. The analysis relies on quantitative and qualitative evidence from the biggest data-gathering project on post-socialist mortality. The health of individuals and democracy are intertwined; people in health-deprived areas often support anti-establishment populists. Thus, designing economic transformations with less shock and more therapy is vital to save lives and safeguard democracy.
Call for papers: Presentations on topics around health and deindustrialisation
Submissions
The deadline for submissions is the 26th January, but get in touch if you have any difficulties meeting this deadline. Decisions will be communicated by the 3rd February. Please send your abstract submissions to c.m.leavey2@ncl.ac.uk.
We welcome papers from a wide range of disciplines that cover the following themes:
Legacies of industrial disease and injuries on local health
The lived experience of deindustrialisation in a place
The transformation of the economy and the implications for local labour markets and health
Papers can be submitted as a full presentation, which will last for 15 minutes. We will consider work-in-progress submitted for a full presentation. We also welcome submissions for ‘lightning talks’, which will last for 5 minutes and can be used to share work-in-progress.
Practical information
Full presentations will be approximately 15 minutes long, with time for a panel discussion at the end. Submissions should include a title, an abstract outlining the paper (no more than 300 words), and a brief biographical note about the author (100 words).
We will also run a session of lightning talks, with these papers lasting 5 minutes, before opening to a wider discussion. Please state if you would like to be considered for a lightning talk and provide a summary of approximately 150 words of your proposed talk.
Attendance to the symposium is free, with lunch and refreshments provided. Travel and accommodation bursaries are available, prioritising early career researchers and those without access to institutional support.
If you have any other questions, please get in touch with the organisers: Cara Leavey (c.m.leavey2@ncl.ac.uk) or Dr Courtney McNamara (courtney.mcnamara@ncl.ac.uk).
If you would like to join the day as an attendee, please complete the following form and a member of the team will get back to you: https://forms.office.com/e/wA9fsz5Drb
