For the 2^nd International Conference for the Social Sciences and Humanities in HIV we invite papers that address the theme of ‘KNOWING PRACTICES’. This dual concept poses questions about the multiple practices that comprise the dynamics of the epidemic and how the practice of knowing itself, is engaged and operationalised. ‘KNOWING PRACTICES’ refers to:

1. The practices that produce, reproduce and transform the social worlds in which people live. This includes what knowledge we have of the forces shaping the epidemic - whether social, structural, geographic, historical, political or economic - and their connection to practice; and
2. The different ways of ‘doing science’ or knowing (and unknowing), that is, on the ways in which we as scientists claim to have evidence.

We hope this theme will be sufficiently broad and, at the same time, nuanced in reference to the work of the social sciences and humanities to elicit papers on a variety of topics. Within the theme of ‘KNOWING PRACTICES’, we ask what sorts of knowing and un-knowing practices are assembled and enacted as ‘authentic’, ‘valid’, ‘verifiable’? What role is there for the social sciences and humanities in the increasingly biomedical vision of the future by science and its funders? Indeed, in what ways does the promise articulated at AIDS 2012 – that biomedicine will eradicate HIV and end the epidemic – put in place strategies that simultaneously evade the complexity of the everyday nature of living and working with HIV? How can the social sciences and humanities produce knowledge that has an impact on the many forces that shape the epidemic?

While papers that address the conference’s theme ‘KNOWING PRACTICES’ are especially relevant, papers contributing to the advance of rigorous social scientific and humanities approaches to HIV and take other perspectives on the social sciences and humanities are also encouraged.

Conference Papers/ Full Sessions/ Round Table Discussions
We encourage papers/discussions at all levels of analysis and from paradigms and perspectives that address the following:

• The biomedical claims of ‘turning the tide’ to end the epidemic
• Novel knowing practices within science, social science and/or communities
• Relationships among biomedical knowledge, social-scientific knowledge, local knowledge and community know-how
• How social and humanities knowledge, perhaps together with biomedical knowledge, can be used to develop more effective responses to the epidemic
• The performative work of knowing practices (for example in the use of racial, ethnic and gender categories) as they also involve not-knowing (for instance, not knowing socio-economic difference through gender classification etc.)
• Issues of collaborating with different knowing practices
• The knowledge we have of the different forces shaping the epidemic and how we conceive their connection to practice
• What we know of global disparities in socioeconomic and/or other resources, and how well this knowledge is actioned in responses to the epidemic
• The ways in which notions of 'the local' and 'the global' inform each other and the implications of this for funding, policy and programming
• If knowledge is not neutral and but generative in ways that enact and affect different interests, how knowing practices give shape to the local and global dynamics
• The ways in which particular agencies or groups bring about changes in social, economic and political forces that shape the epidemic and/or responses to it
• What we know about risk and care practices in different contexts and how we can ensure our methods of knowing are appropriate to local needs