We are pleased to invite contributions to the GREATLEAP Conference which will take place on 11-13 May 2026 at Babeș-Bolyai University, Centre for Population Studies, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
The event will bring together scholars and practitioners to engage in dialogue on the long-term historical patterns and contemporary dynamics of health and death inequalities. Our aim is to bridge disciplines, methods, and data to deepen our understanding of the evolution and determinants of inequalities in health and mortality across historical time, and to explore how past realities shape today’s disparities in health outcomes. A main part of the conference will therefore be devoted to meetings of the working groups of GREATLEAP.
Below, you can find the specific calls from the working groups. The deadline for all calls for proposals and for registration is 2 February 2026. You may respond to any of the calls here.
If you wish to submit proposals to more than one call, you can simply submit the form multiple times. Funding for travel and a daily allowance will be available for accepted participants.
In addition to the specific calls, WG5 will organize workshops on “From Research to Reach: Creating Communications Products for Broader Impact”, which will be open to all accepted participants. In addition, we will organize a session on ‘Ethical Aspects of Using (Historical) Cause-of-death Sources’. If there is another specific session/topic you would like to organize which is not part of the current call, you can email a proposal to tim.riswick@ru.nl before 2 February 2026.
All contributions presented at the conference will be considered for publication in our Open Research Europe special collection, Multidisciplinary Approaches to Historical Health Inequalities, 1800–2022.
Working Group 2
Based on the Historical International Classification of Disease (ICD10h) and the ongoing work across all sub-working groups, we invite contributions to one of the following sessions:
Multiple Causes: Presentations by sub-group members showcasing examples and applications using their own data.
Historic Strings: Updates from sub-sub-groups working with historic cause-of-death strings in different languages, followed by discussion.
Categorisations: Updates from sub-sub-groups developing or comparing different categorisation schemes, including discussion and cross-classification comparisons.
Abstracts should be of maximum 300 words and can represent work in progress.
Working Group 3
Based on the Hackaton in June 2025, we have identified several key challenges in methodological approaches. We are inviting contributions focusing specifically on ‘informed missing data’ and ‘population at risk estimation’, as well as flash talks on any topic with a focus on methodological approaches to inequality in health and causes-of-death.
We invite contributions in any of the three categories below. Abstracts should be of maximum 300 words and can represent work in progress.
Informed missing data. We all encounter missing data in one form or another. This could be death records without a cause or missing key information (such as sex, gender, address), but also contains broad cause of death categories, that might mask more specific underlying causes, such as old age, weakness, and so on. These broad categories represent a degree of uncertainty which may hide social and cultural inequalities, yet may still be informative, when combined with other variables, and may be very important if the reason for the missing information is associated with inequality.
Population at risk estimation. Another key challenge in historical analyses is defining the population at risk. Only rarely do we have access to detailed census information for the entire time period of intertest. Often, the population at risk if roughly estimated based on suboptimal or aggregated information. Yet defining the population as risk, is especially important in the investigating various subgroups with potentially unequal mortality risks. Yet how we obtain these estimates is often of a lower priority than the mortality statistics themselves.
Other topics: to appeal to a larger audience, we are also open for any topics focused on methodological issues in historical analyses of inequalities in health.
Accepted manuscripts will receive a timeslot in one of the three categories, 1 and 2 will have 15 minutes with 5 minute discussion, while those in group 3 will have 10 minutes total. All contributions will be incited to submit their manuscripts to our collection in Open Science Europe.
Working Group 4
We are seeking presentations focused on health inequalities and/or causes of death examined from a historical perspective. The session is designed to provide focused, high-impact feedback and facilitate connections for long-term mentorship.
Your presentation should clearly address the following three areas, ensuring your work aligns with the session’s focus on historical health research:
The Research Context (The “What”):
Briefly introduce your research topic, overarching goal, and hypotheses.
How does your work relate to health inequalities or causes of death in the past?
What is the novelty or significance of your work?
Current Status & Findings (The “Where”):
Where are you in your research timeline (e.g., proposal stage, data collection, analysis)?
Summarize your key preliminary findings or results so far.
Specific Challenge(s) (The “Help Me With”):
Clearly articulate 1–2 concrete challenges or roadblocks you currently face in your research.
Examples include: methodological issues with historical data sources, difficulty linking data, challenges with statistical analysis (e.g., survival analysis, time series), or conceptualizing historical context. Be specific!
Goal: Your presentation should be a focused appeal for specific guidance, not a comprehensive defence of your entire project.
To be considered for a presentation slot, please submit a concise abstract of your research (max. 300 words) and the specific challenge you face.
