10–12 May 2027 | University College Cork, Ireland
After four years of collaboration across disciplines, countries, datasets, and methods, GREATLEAP is coming to its final conference. We are pleased to invite contributions to the GREATLEAP Conference: Shaping Future Research into Historical Health Inequalities, which will take place at University College Cork from 10–12 May 2027.
GREATLEAP has brought together researchers working across historical demography, epidemiology, history, geography, sociology, statistics, data science, and related fields to investigate the long-term development of health inequalities. Over the course of the Action, we have worked to connect previously separate sources, approaches, and research traditions, while applying innovative tools and methods for studying health and mortality in the past.
The final conference provides an opportunity to connect these different threads: to bring together the findings, methods, datasets, and collaborations that have emerged through GREATLEAP, to reflect critically on what we have learned, and to consider where research on historical health inequalities should go next.
Themes
We welcome sessions and contributions addressing historical health inequalities on the following topics:
Individual-level causes of death and diseases: Studies using cause-of-death information to investigate the changing disease environment and its social, demographic, economic, environmental, or geographical determinants.
Sources, data, and digitisation of mortality and morbidity sources: Research addressing the opportunities and challenges involved in working with historical health data, such as cause-of-death records and hospital records.
Classification and comparability: Contributions addressing the classification, harmonisation, and comparison of historical causes of death and disease. We particularly welcome work building on the Historical International Classification of Diseases (ICD10h), as well as research exploring the possibilities and limitations of cross-national and long-term comparisons.
Methods for historical health research: Studies developing or applying statistical, demographic, epidemiological, spatial, or computational methods to historical health data. This may include approaches to missing and uncertain information, population-at-risk estimation, inequality measurement, causal inference, spatial analysis, time series, and other methodological challenges.
Connecting health inequalities across time: Research that explicitly connects historical patterns to contemporary health inequalities, or that considers how historical institutions, environments, social structures, and disease experiences have shaped later health outcomes.
New directions and the future of the field: We particularly encourage contributions that look beyond existing GREATLEAP research to propose new questions, methods, datasets, collaborations, research agendas or even collaborative projects. What should historical health-inequality research focus on next? What opportunities emerge from combining sources, disciplines, and methods in new ways?
Looking back and forward
As the final GREATLEAP conference, the event will also provide space to reflect on the achievements and lessons of the Action. We therefore welcome contributions that draw together findings from GREATLEAP working groups, compare approaches developed in different parts of the network, or demonstrate how collaborations initiated through GREATLEAP have resulted in new research.
At the same time, the conference is intended to be a beginning as much as an ending. We encourage contributions that use the conference to develop new collaborations, formulate follow-up projects, identify unresolved methodological and conceptual challenges, and establish future directions for research on historical health inequalities.
The conference will therefore combine traditional paper sessions with opportunities for discussion, workshops, thematic roundtables, and other formats that encourage interaction and collaboration.
ITC and Young Scholars Flash Session
We particularly welcome contributions from early-career and ITC researchers. The conference will include a dedicated Flash Session, providing an opportunity to present emerging research, preliminary findings, new ideas, or methodological challenges in a short and engaging format.
The session is intended to give early stage and ITC researchers an opportunity to share their work with the wider GREATLEAP community, receive feedback, and make new connections.
Contributions
We welcome proposals from researchers at all career stages and from a broad range of disciplines. Contributions may present completed research, work in progress, new datasets or methodological approaches, or emerging research ideas.
We particularly encourage:
Individual paper proposals on:
All topics for the ITC/young scholars flash session;
Using the ICD10h coding and/or classification system;
Methodological approaches to study individual-level (historical) cause of death data.
Session proposals that include:
Comparative and/or interdisciplinary contributions;
Contributions emerging from GREATLEAP Working Groups;
Roundtables that bring together researchers from different disciplines, countries, or research traditions.