Epidemic Efficiencies: Data, Demography and Disease in Africa’s Long Twentieth Century

As a fellow at the Brocher, I intend to complete a significant portion of the analysis and writing for the proposed monograph. This book, alongside the other outputs from the project—including an edited ‘handbook for the history of epidemiology’, currently under contract with Palgrave—will offer an important intervention in the historiography of epidemiology and detail the historical determinants of contemporary epidemiological practice. In doing so, this book, and the broader project, hopes to advance the social history of medicine, the social study of science, the social construction of scientific data, and the field of epidemiology itself. The area around Lac Léman has been a central site in the development of epidemiological epistemology and a fellowship at Brocher will offer a rare opportunity to work amongst a group of likeminded scholars while in close proximity to international interest groups and their archives. Particularly relevant for the history of epidemiology are the records held in the United Nations library and archives, inclusive of the League of Nations archives, and the World Health Organization archives, both of which are in Geneva. As well as productive engagements with fellow researchers at the Brocher Foundation, I hope to develop this work in dialogue with local colleagues in my field, including the medical anthropology group headed by Vinh-Kim Nguyen at the Graduate Institute in Geneva; Yi-Tang Lin and other science studies colleagues at ETH Zurich; and the recent awardees of the SNSF grant, ‘FamiLEA : The Remaking of the Family in East Africa’, which includes Yvan Droz (Graduate Institute) and Clémentine Rossier (Université de Genève).