The University of Washington’s Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies and Department of Geography are pleased to announce that Taking Care: a conference for engaging the politics, processes, and ethics of care work will be held on May 3-4, 2019 at the University of Washington Seattle. We aim to bring together researchers who broadly engage with care theory in their work in some way: whether through care labor, politics of care, feminist care ethics, the racialization of care, representations of care, care networks, or any other framing that helps us to understand care in new ways. We are particularly interested in ways that power, politics, identity, and socio-spatial processes intersect to shape how we understand, value, and think about care. This opens possibilities for numerous orientations, including care as work, care as practice, and care as relationships.

This conference aims to bring together scholars and community members who engage with different facets of care work in their research and in their everyday lives. We invite participants to think about care with each other in new and different ways, including the politics, processes, precarity, and ethics of care work. The conference provides an opportunity for presentations on care research and advocacy, small group seminars, and other spaces to develop our own networks of care. A detailed schedule will soon be posted online at takingcareconference.wordpress.com.