Since the start of the 21st century, smartphones have proliferated across the globe. But how do they affect our ability to live healthily in a time when healthcare services are under strain from under-investment and new threats? And what role did smartphones play in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic?
Programme
Introduction by Tom Neumark
Postdoctoral Fellow Tom Neumark at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo.
Keynote lecture by Daniel Miller: ‘Smart-from-below: An anthropological alternative to mHealth’
Professor of Anthropology at UCL.
Comment by Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Professor of Anthropology, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.
Panel discussion – The Smartphone Pandemic: Mobile technologies and data in the COVID-19 response
Panel: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Aisha Fofana Ibrahim, Katerini Storeng and Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée
Chair: Sridhar Venkatapuram
About the event
In his talk, Professor Daniel Miller shifts our attention away from health apps designed by experts, and towards how ordinary people creatively use generic smartphone functions and apps to improve their health. Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, will comment drawing from his own work on smartphones in the contemporary world.
A panel will discuss what happened during the pandemic when the smartphone quickly became thought of as a key solution to controlling the spread of the Covid-19 virus. Drawing on research in different parts of the world, the panel will discuss the political, economic, and ethical issues that emerged from this development.
Organizers
This event is part of the PhD Course ‘Digitalisation, health and society‘ and the project “The Smartphone Pandemic: Mobile technologies and data in the COVID-19 response”, hosted by the Global Health Politics research group at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo.