New publication: conspiracy theories and religious biopolitics
Kiarash Aramesh (PennWest University, former Stehr-Boldt Fellow at the IBME), Federico Germani, and Giovanni Spitale have published "Conspiracy theory as a component of religious biopolitics" in Social Theory & Health (2026, 24:6).
The paper examines how identity-centered religious movements — Christian nationalism in the United States, Hindu nationalism in India, and political Islam in Iran — systematically deploy conspiracy theories and health pseudoscience as instruments of biopolitical control. Drawing on the institute's ongoing work on infodemic management ethics, the paper argues that bioethical institutions have a specific and underexplored role in addressing health disinformation when its sources are structural rather than incidental.
The publication follows Spitale et al.'s 2025 paper "On Religious Influence in Bioethics: The Limits of Pluriversalism," extending that line of inquiry from normative critique to empirical analysis of specific movements.