This South African summer and fall I’m spending some time broadening my horizons and experimenting with interdisciplinarity.

In February I have been accepted to participate in a unique workshop about the role of technology in maternal, new born and child health together with practitioners and scientists from some of the leading intuitions in the field.

“The primary objective of this workshop is to build a roadmap for technology development to help achieve SDG 3 in maternal, newborn and child health. For this, we will convene a select group of leaders in development and deployment of global health solutions and mobile health technologies together with key stakeholders from both developed and developing countries.”

The workshop is preceded by a roundtable conference about mobile technologies in health care at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies.

In March I plan to spend two days together with birth practitioners from all over South Africa at the Midwifery and Birth Conference in Cape Town. 

“The Midwifery and Birth Conference was established in 2013 by a diverse group of women with a shared vision. We saw a need to bring together everyone involved with childbirth in order to address the many challenges we face as Midwives, Mothers and Birth Workers. We also feel strongly that we as South African's already have a vast wealth of knowledgeable and talented professionals who can share their skills with others. Our aim is to provide a platform for that knowledge to be shared, and celebrated.”

These events are great opportunities to share findings and ideas across disciplines, but are also part of the fieldwork in which I am trying to learn about how new media technologies are talked about and made into solutions to health problems.