Data Sprint: “Experience vs Expertise in Digital Health”
3–4 September 2026
TU Dortmund University, Germany

We invite researchers to participate in a two-day Data Sprint on “Experience vs Expertise in Digital Health”, to be held at TU Dortmund University on 3–4 September 2026. The sprint will explore how medical knowledge emerges at the intersection of professional expertise and lived experience, particularly in relation to digital health technologies and self-tracking practices. Digital health tools increasingly generate forms of knowledge rooted in everyday experiences and patient-generated data. At the same time, these developments raise questions about how such forms of knowledge interact with established medical expertise: How are experiential data interpreted, validated, or contested? In which ways do lived experiences challenge, complement, or reshape professional understandings of health and illness? And how are these different forms of knowledge negotiated within healthcare contexts? Additionally, we ask how technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) might reshape the relationship between embodied clinical experience, technological mediation, and medical judgment. What might they reveal about the potential fragility or reconfiguration of medical expertise in high-tech healthcare environments?

The Data Sprint is designed as an intensive, collaborative format centred on the joint interpretation of empirical materials. Rather than presenting finished papers, participants will bring selected qualitative materials from their own research, such as interview excerpts, fieldnotes, platform interactions, or self-tracking records. In a series of small working sessions, we will analyse and discuss these materials together using qualitative social science approaches, focusing on comparison, interpretation, and collective reflection.

The sprint aims to bring together participants from fields such as Science and Technology Studies (STS), sociology, anthropology, media studies, or related disciplines. The discussions will be accompanied by Denisa Butnaru (Freiburg, DE) and Benjamin Marent (Sussex, UK) as experts, whose work on digital health, patient engagement, and activism will help frame the thematic discussions and connect insights emerging from the different empirical cases.

Submission
Researchers interested in participating are invited to submit a short proposal (approx. 300 words) describing:

• the empirical material they would like to bring to the sprint
• the research context from which it emerges
• and how it relates to questions of experience, expertise, and digital health.

Please also include a brief biographical note (approx. 100 words) and send your proposal by 15 May 2026 to Ann Kristin Augst and/or contact her in advance if you have any questions.

Applicants will be notified of the outcome by the end of May 2026. Further details regarding the programme and practical arrangements will be shared with selected participants.