Written by Siobhán Healy-Cullen and Jessica Tappin
In early July, the University of Galway’s School of Psychology hosted the 14th biennial International Society of Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) conference, bringing together 200 delegates from 31 countries. As early career researchers (ECRs), this was our first chance to meet with the ISCHP community face-to-face, and we happily embraced the 30-plus-hour journey from Aotearoa New Zealand to Ireland’s west coast.
For Siobhán, who had previously studied and worked at the University of Galway, returning was a strange and wonderful collision of worlds: friends from her New Zealand life meeting her Irish colleagues, and that slightly surreal feeling of past and present folding in on each other. For Jessica, this was her first in-person conference; having begun her academic journey in the middle of a global pandemic. Connecting with people she had only ever met as little faces on her screen felt very special.
The conference theme, Contesting Borders, was woven through the proceedings right from the beginning. In her welcome, Sarah Riley (the outgoing ISCHP chair) invited us to think of ISCHP as grounded not in epistemic ignorance but in its opposite: a commitment to listen with depth and sincerity. Chris Noone, the conference chair, spoke about finding refuge in community, the permeability of the walls between us, and storied his own journey to ISCHP. Already, a thread was pulling through: stories “matter” because they make meaning of matter – they don’t just describe the world, they make the world. Throughout the conference, we came to realise that Contesting Borders can be understood as a storytelling practice: the way we challenge, soften, or redraw boundaries, between people, disciplines, histories, is through the stories we tell and the ways we choose to hear them.
We were very fortunate to have illustrator Esther Blodau creating a visual reference of the conference across days 2-4. It was fantastic to watch these artworks develop in real time. Click on the images to zoom-in.
The wonderful keynote speakers also demonstrated the power of “stories”. Parul Bansal traced how WB Yeats engaged with Indian poetry, not as an exotic “other”, but as a source of inspiration and wisdom, and challenged the notion that the big bang of knowledge production happened in the west. Peter Hegarty unpacked the tangled history of gender research and biomedical authority in framing intersex bodies. Another story he told was the “classic” tale of the ECR life; the precarity, and the necessity of supporting and making space for ECR. We, as ECRs, found resonances in his story. Catriona Macleod offered a critical health-citizenship framework that challenged us to question the stories we tell about belonging itself. Who gets to belong? Marco Gemignani asked us to reconsider transmethodologies, warning that borders, even methodological ones, “matter” because they create possibilities and limits for knowing.
Another familiar story that recurred throughout the conference, and in corridor chats, was the extreme neoliberal hollowing-out of the academy and health-funding: reactionary right-wing coalitions conjuring “gender ideology” as a political phantasm, “great replacement” rhetoric wielded to justify slashing Global South funding. In the workshop on Uniting Academics to Resist the Global War on Health and Truth, Parul Bansal again took us to India, where the neoliberal redesign of universities has bent higher education toward market logics and away from knowledge seeking in its broadest sense. It was energising to be standing in solidarity with others, discussing practical ways to resist (e.g., to demand transparency in leadership appointments, protections from retaliation, and audits of academic freedom).
There are countless conference moments that stand out. For us, the “Re-Vision” workshop by Carla Rice and Susan Dion (freshly crowned the ISCHP-couple award winners!) was an absolute highlight. Their work with non-normatively embodied and minded people, those deemed “nonviable” or “disposable” by dominant narratives, demonstrated how art can resist deficit logics and re-make, re-story, the world in ways that affirm difference.
Most importantly, in the symposium delivered by Palestinian scholars (Critical Perspectives and Research on Oppression and Liberation in Palestine), we were reminded that self-determination cannot exist under conditions of occupation. There was a fierce clarity underpinning this: one does not assign blame to the suffocated for resisting the suffocator. We were introduced to the concept of sumud; a form of steadfastness grounded in endurance, patience, and agency. This is not the individualised “resilience” perpetuated in mainstream wellness discourse, or about “bouncing back”. It’s about saying “no” in the face of oppression. Surviving is about agentic resistance. But healing needs to be systematic and social. We were called to action: “the voice of Palestine must remain loud in your universities”.
Between sessions, conversation buzzed in the main atrium and when the weather allowed, onto the grass outside. In true Irish fashion, sunshine turned to sideways rain in the time it took to finish a sentence. The conference dinner ended with a Ceilí, where all who were unfamiliar with the steps relied on the kindness and patience of our high-spirited instructors. In an academic world where people tend to take themselves very seriously, it was a highlight to see everyone get a little bit silly.
For us, ISCHP 2025 was a reminder of why we do this work. It was about friendship as resistance in a neoliberal academy, about holding space for stories that refuse erasure, and about imagining better, more just futures for health. This was an absolute credit to the organising committee’s careful planning and effort – they pulled it off beautifully! We left Galway tired in the best possible way, heads buzzing, and already looking forward to ISCHP 2027, in Szeged, Hungary.
About the Authors
Siobhán Healy-Cullen and Jessica Tappin are friends and colleagues, working as part of the Health Psychology team at Massey University in Aotearoa New Zealand.
About our next conference…. ISCHP 2027!
We are delighted to let you know that our next conference with be hosted by the University of Szeged, Hungary on the 7-10th July, 2027.
Please see here for more information on the local organising committee, key dates and information about the University.