Workshop
Immunity and Resistance: (re)valuing vaccines and antibiotics in the shifting terrains of global health
15-16 December 2025, University of Vienna, Austria
Conveners
Christian Haddad (Department of Science & Technology Studies and Department of Sociology, University of Vienna)
Katharina T. Paul (Department of Political Science, University of Vienna); in collaboration with Samantha Vanderslott (University of Oxford)
Keynotes
Claas Kirchhelle (INSERM) & Janina Kehr (University of Vienna)
The workshop invites critical contributions from the social sciences and humanities to a workshop themed ‘immunity and resistance’. This theme intends to bring into view recent shifts and future trajectories of global/planetary health, taking vaccines and antibiotics – and their precarious roles in contemporary politics, societies and economies – as an empirical lens and conceptual starting point for discussions. The 20th century witnessed extraordinary progress in the field of global health, particularly in the control and mitigation of infectious diseases. Much of this success is attributable to two cornerstone technologies of biomedicine: vaccines and antibiotics. These innovations significantly reduced global morbidity and mortality and came to represent the promise of transformative medical advances. These advances, however, have encountered serious setbacks on several fronts due to the complex interplay of biological, environmental, socio-political, and political-economic developments.
First, on the microbial front, societies face not only a growing threat from emerging infectious diseases and zoonoses – most recently exemplified by the COVID-19 pandemic – but also the relentless spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and consequently, drug resistant infections. AMR complicates the treatment of diseases once considered ‘conquered’ by modern drugs, thereby jeopardizing routine medical procedures and undermining the collective sense of safety ncapsulated in modern antibiotic drugs (Landecker, 2016).
Second, on the socio-political side, both vaccine hesitancy and inequity of access have presented major obstacles to realizing population immunity through vaccination. Vaccines help prevent infections caused by drug-resistant pathogens, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, thereby intrinsically reducing the overall need for antimicrobial treatments. Despite this critical role, however, the value of vaccines in the fight against AMR is not adequately reflected in national policy responses, nor in mainstream public discourse (Charani et al., 2023; Jones et al., 2025). Beyond this, policy responses to the wealth of misinformation and regarding vaccination have so far failed to regain the public’s trust in vaccines.
Finally, political-economic factors have shaped biomedical research and development (R&D) in both vaccine development and antimicrobial treatments (Alas Portillo et al., 2024; Doganova & Rabeharisoa, 2024). The over-reliance on profit-driven R&D has meant that industry actors have set research and investment priorities that often inadequately match critical public health needs. This is especially evident in the antibiotics R&D sector, where industry-led innovation has stalled in recent decades (World Health Organization, 2024), and in the decline of publicly funded vaccine production initiatives (World Health Organization, 2022). Recent politically motivated attacks on biomedical research infrastructure, along with reduced investment in international cooperation, have compounded these policy challenges, which now appear resistant to resolution due to a high degree of scientific and political uncertainty, and significance of the values at stake.
Overall, these intricate challenges around immunity and resistance offer an intriguing empirical window through which to study the multi-layered shifts in global health, as well as the crises facing it today, requiring scholars and practitioners to (re)value the role of vaccines and antibiotics in contemporary (planetary) health governance. This requires conceptualizing vaccines and antibiotics as embedded in the shifting microbial, sociopolitical and political-economic terrains of global/planetary health.
Workshop focus and aims
This workshop invites critical and interdisciplinary contributions that engage with this critical juncture in public health through the twin themes of immunity and resistance. We welcome contributions that interrogate the shifting roles of vaccines and antibiotics within the landscape of global health and AMR, especially in relation to the following questions:
- How do immunity and resistance – understood as biological and social phenomena – reshape our understanding of global and planetary health in the context of vaccines and antibiotics?
- What political, social, economic and epistemic factors have shaped – and continue to shape – the use of vaccines and antibiotics in the governance, perception, and implementation of public health strategies across diverse contexts? How do different actors assign value to these technologies and with what implications for governance?
- In what ways do contemporary challenges in antibiotic and vaccine research, development, deployment, and distribution reflect broader shifts in public health paradigms, and how might they inform future responses to microbial threats?
Duration: 2 days (15 and 16 December 2025)
Location: Vienna, Austria
Participants: Circa 10-15 scholars All meals (including a dinner on 15th December) will be covered by organisers, but regretfully we are unable to support travel or accommodation.
Submission deadline has already passed.
Workshop Programme
Please note that this is only a preliminary schedule and slight changes might occur later!
Workshop Day 1 (December 15, 2025)
09:00-09:30 Coffee & registration
09:30-10:00 Welcome & introduction by the conveners
10:00-11:45 Panel 1: Safeguarding Immunity
11:45-12:45 Lunch break
12:45-14:30 Panel 2: Designing Immunity
14:30-14:45 Coffee break
14:45-16:30 Panel 3: Governing Resistance
16:30-17:00 Coffee break and change of venue
17:00-18:30 Public keynote by Class Kirchhelle & Janina Kehr
18:30-19:00 Wrap up
Workshop Day 2 (December 16, 2025)
09:00-09:15 Coffee
09:15-11:00 Panel 4: Reimagining Resistance
11:00-11:15 Coffee break
11:15-13:00 Panel 5: Perceiving Immunity & Resistance
13:00-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-15:45 Reflection session & workshop wrap-up
Public Keynotes
A public keynote event will be held on Monday, 15th December 2025, with Claas Kirchhelle (INSERM, Paris) and Janina Kehr (University of Vienna). It will take place at 17:00 in Franz-König-Saal (Lecture Hall 06), University of Vienna (Universitätsring 1, 1010 Vienna).
Information on how to get to the venue
The Talks
- Microbial Hauntings. Affect and Time in an Age of AMR - Janina Kehr (Professor of Medical Anthropology and Global Health, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna)
Janina Kehr is a Professor of Medical Anthropology and Global Health at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna, where she leads the reserach group Health Matters and directs University of Vienna's research hub "Health and Society". Her research
explores the temporal politics, moral economies, and environmental consequences of biomedicine and public health, with a particular focus on infectious diseases, medical devices and hospital spaces.
She is the author of Spectres de la tuberculose (PUR) and has edited several special journal issues and books covering Universal Healthcare, Health and the Environment, and Hospital Ethnography. Kehr’s work has been shaped by international research experience, including positions as Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Zurich (2011–2017) and as an SNSF Ambizione Research Fellow at the University of Bern (2017-2020).
Prior to joining Vienna in 2021, she completed doctoral studies at EHESS Paris and Humboldt University Berlin and trained in anthropology and political science at the University of Göttingen and the University of California Santa Cruz. - The Antibiocene. Rethinking Microbial Governance During a Time of Planetary Stress - Claas Kirchhelle (Associate Professor, French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM))
Claas Kirchhelle is a historian of “bugs and drugs” based at the Paris CERMES3 Unit (INSERM). His research focuses on microbial environments, disease surveillance and control, and the history of pharmaceutical innovation and regulation. His work has informed national and international policy reviews on antimicrobial resistance (AMR), laboratory-based public health surveillance, and vaccine and drug safety systems.
He has contributed to major international reports on AMR and authored an expert report on UK public health systems and pandemic preparedness for the UK COVID-19 Inquiry. Kirchhelle has co-curated two award-winning exhibitions — Back from the Dead (penicillin) and Typhoidland (typhoid) — and authored four books on topics including antibiotics in food production and the history of animal welfare science and activism.
Prior to joining INSERM, Kirchhelle was a Martin Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford (2015–2019), and a Wellcome Trust University Award Lecturer at University College Dublin (2020–2024).
For further information and inquiries contact us: immunity-resistance.politikwissenschaft@univie.ac.at.
Workshop funding: The event is co-funded by the ERC Starting Grant project ALTERBIOTIC (grant no. 101163944) and the FWF-Austrian Science Fund START prize grant ‘Valuing Vaccination’ (grant no. Y1344). The workshop receives additional support from the University of Vienna’s Health-in-Society Research Network.
Reference List
Alas Portillo, M., Gómez Rodríguez, I. M., Gradmann, C., Kirchhelle, C., Leisner, J. J., Martinenghi, L. D., Paterson, E. L., Santesmases, M. J., Skender, B., & Vagneron, F. (2024). Paradoxes of the antibiotic pipeline. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11(1), 1–4.
Charani, E., Mendelson, M., Pallett, S. J. C., Ahmad, R., Mpundu, M., Mbamalu, O., Bonaconsa, C., Nampoothiri, V., Singh, S., PeiUer-Smadja, N., Anton-Vazquez, V., Moore, L. S. P., Schouten, J., Kostyanev, T., Vlahović-Palčevski, V., Kofteridis, D., Corrêa, J. S., & Holmes, A. H. (2023). An analysis of existing national action plans for antimicrobial resistance—Gaps and opportunities in strategies optimising antibiotic use in human populations. The Lancet Global Health, 11(3), e466–e474. doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(23)00019-0
Doganova, L., & Rabeharisoa, V. (2024). The temporalities of prices: ‘Value-based pricing’ in pharmaceutical markets. Economy and Society, 53(2), 183–204. doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2024.2346037
Jones, I., Groves, H., Hore, R., & King, D. (2025). Vaccination to prevent antimicrobial resistance. Wellcome Trust. https://cms.wellcome.org/sites/default/files/2025-05/vaccination-to-prevent-antimicrobial-resistance-report.pdf
Landecker, H. (2016). Antibiotic Resistance and the Biology of History. Body & Society, 22(4), 19–52. doi.org/10.1177/1357034X14561341
World Health Organization. (2022). Global vaccine market report 2022: A shared understanding for equitable access to vaccines.
World Health Organization. (2024). 2023 Antibacterial agents in clinical and preclinical development. www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240094000
