How do people anticipate the future and plan their lives when little is certain? How can we take account of the significance of demographic ‘vital events’ (such as marriage, childbirth or migration) when the horizon of a possible future within which these events acquire meaning becomes pluralized, fluid or contested? How do changing life-course patterns relate to social transformations on larger spatial and temporal scales? Which social and economic institutions construct and normalize life-stages and, vice versa, how do life-course patterns affect and transform institutions? Finally, how do these processes relate to the construction and practice of gender orders? These were the central questions debated during the workshop on ‘Vital Conjunctures — Gender in Times of Uncertainty’1, where the papers by Jennifer Johnson-Hanks and Erdmute Alber compiled in this SPP 1448 Working Paper were presented, the first as keynote and the second as critical comment.