Locating Trust: An Interdisciplinary Exploration

Journal of the British Academy

Open for abstract submissions until December 1, 2022

Guest Editors: Megan Schmidt-Sane (Institute of Development Studies and corresponding guest editor), m.schmidt-sane@ids.ac.uk, Elizabeth Storer (London School of Economics and Political Science), Santiago Ripoll (Institute of Development Studies), Tabitha Hrynick (Institute of Development Studies)

Background to the Special Issue

The low uptake of vaccines and other preventative measures is often linked by researchers to phenomena described as mistrust or medical mistrust. Medical mistrust refers to a tendency to distrust medical systems and personnel believed to represent the dominant culture in a given society. ‘Mistrust,’ in its various forms, has been often used by policymakers to explain minoritised community ‘resistance’ to accepting COVID-19 vaccines in light of histories of medical experimentation, injustice and oppression, and systemic racism. Experiences of injustice, in fact, have come to feature prominently in the literature on vaccine hesitancy. Yet, little is known about how trust relationships can be built with communities, the state and the healthcare system, following legacies of oppression.

Whilst ‘trust’ has been prolifically invoked in public health policymaking vernacular, it has been relegated to a measurable fact rather than a dynamic product of complex social, political, and epidemiological contexts. Less is known about how trust is experienced, conceptualised, deployed, and (re)built across contexts. There is a need to build dialogue across disciplines to understand, explore, and contextualise ‘trust.’

This special issue of the Journal of the British Academy will build an interdisciplinary dialogue within the social sciences and humanities, to understand, conceptualise, and contextualise trust and mistrust as it relates to public health policies, practices, and institutions. We aim to:

1. Explore interdisciplinary approaches and empirical examples of trust and medical mistrust as related to health.

2. Identify and describe community experiences, local histories, and political-economic relations that underpin trust and mistrust in authorities, including medical mistrust.

3. Address limitations and identify solutions to interdisciplinary conceptualisation and operationalisation of trust.

Deadline and Submission Details

Please submit a short abstract (no more than 250 words) by December 1, 2022. Please submit abstracts via this Google Form.

Decisions will be sent by December 15. Please note, we would want to see a final draft of the paper (5,000-6,000 words) from accepted authors by February 1. Papers will then go for peer review.

Please email Megan Schmidt-Sane (m.schmidt-sane@ids.ac.uk) with any questions.