Epidemiological Surveillance in the Global South

Datum
22. Feb­ru­ar – 23. Feb­ru­ar 2027 

Work­shop in Manchester

„Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Sur­veil­lance in the Glob­al South”
22–23 Feb­ru­ary 2027
Manchester

Dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sions is 30 Sep­tem­ber 2026

While epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance is under­stood as a medico-tech­ni­cal or bureau­crat­ic response to dis­eases occur­rences and/or epi­dem­ic sit­u­a­tions, it is also a his­tor­i­cal­ly sit­u­at­ed, mate­ri­al­ly ground­ed, and social­ly embed­ded prac­tice. Schol­ar­ship in the his­to­ry of med­i­cine, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy stud­ies and med­ical anthro­pol­o­gy has shown that sur­veil­lance activ­i­ties emerge with­in par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal, epis­temic and insti­tu­tion­al con­texts, reveal­ing how dis­eases and pop­u­la­tions are made vis­i­ble and gov­ern­able (Fou­cault 1977; Arm­strong 1995; Bash­ford 2006; Weir and Mykhalovskiy 2010; Fearn­ley 2010; Bar­ney 2014; Engel­mann 2020).

Adopt­ing such a per­spec­tive brings to the fore the frag­ile and often invis­i­ble epis­temic, mate­r­i­al and human infra­struc­tures that under­gird and enable sur­veil­lance (Keck and Lakoff 2013; Reubi and Cochrane 2025). These infra­struc­tures include lab­o­ra­to­ries and diag­nos­tic tests, med­ical cat­e­gories and clas­si­fi­ca­tion man­u­als, paper or dig­i­tal report­ing forms and records as well as social sur­vey method­olo­gies and map­ping strate­gies. They also encom­pass sci­en­tif­ic and expert net­works, knowl­edge about dis­eases, envi­ron­ments, pop­u­la­tions and cul­tures as well as phil­an­thropic, com­mer­cial and state fund­ing streams. Most impor­tant­ly per­haps, they include the peo­ple who car­ry out sur­veil­lance – doc­tors in hos­pi­tals, tech­ni­cians in the lab, data col­lec­tors at sen­tinel sites, ento­mol­o­gists in the field, activists in the com­mu­ni­ty – with their con­cerns, inter­ests and beliefs (Shapin 1989; Geissler and Molyneux 2011; Biruk 2018; Keck 2020).

These infra­struc­tures help make up the world in which we live (Hack­ing 2002; Law 2009; Boell­storff 2011; Lowray 2017; Reubi 2020). They bring about not just new kinds of peo­ple and soci­eties but also new sorts of epi­demics and dis­eases as well as patho­log­i­cal ecolo­gies and envi­ron­ments. Sur­veil­lance infra­struc­tures and their world-mak­ing pow­ers are embed­ded in and shaped by sci­en­tif­ic, polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial projects, whose beliefs, inter­ests and hier­ar­chies they, in turn, help sup­port and rein­force. The medico-topo­graph­i­cal sur­veys used by Euro­pean mil­i­tary doc­tors dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry col­o­niza­tion of Asia and Africa are a good illus­tra­tion (Arnold 1993; Moussy 2015; Koch 2017). As tools for know­ing the trop­i­cal lands of jun­gles and fevers opened through mil­i­tary con­quest, these sur­veys were key to rul­ing and exploit­ing the colonies, con­sol­i­dat­ing a fas­ci­na­tion with phys­i­cal geog­ra­phy and the rela­tion­ship between cli­mate, race, and health. Sim­i­lar­ly, mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry colo­nial trop­i­cal med­i­cine experts and ento­mol­o­gists deployed eco­log­i­cal inspec­tions and lab­o­ra­to­ry analy­ses to map the asso­ci­a­tions between cli­mate, soil, plants, pathogens, ani­mals and humans that, they believed, explained epi­demics like yel­low fever and malar­ia (Ander­son 2004; Weibel 2015; Cum­misky 2020). Like­wise, late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry talk of a grow­ing can­cer epi­dem­ic in the glob­al South based on data col­lec­tion at sen­tinel sites and math­e­mat­i­cal fore­cast mod­el­ing has been increas­ing­ly mobilised by post­colonies build­ing nation­al health­care sys­tems and transna­tion­al phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies in search of new mar­kets (Vaugh­an 2018; Fras­er et al. forthcoming).

We warm­ly invite any­one inter­est­ed in con­tribut­ing to dis­cus­sions on the his­to­ry and social study of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance in the glob­al south. We are inter­est­ed in papers that engage with some of the fol­low­ing questions:

1. How do dif­fer­ent log­ics of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance, includ­ing mil­i­tary, polic­ing, and car­ing ratio­nal­i­ties, coex­ist, over­lap, or come into ten­sion across his­tor­i­cal contexts?

2. What human, mate­r­i­al, eco­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal, and epis­temic infra­struc­tures under­pin epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance, and how are these infra­struc­tures assem­bled, main­tained, and transformed?

3. How have projects of empire, post­colo­nial nation‑building, and com­mer­cial inter­ests shaped the devel­op­ment, organ­i­sa­tion, and deploy­ment of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal surveillance?

4. What sci­en­tif­ic and polit­i­cal lan­guages, nar­ra­tives, and forms of knowl­edge pro­duc­tion struc­ture epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance prac­tices and ren­der dis­eases, epi­demics, human and ani­mal pop­u­la­tions and ecolo­gies legible?

5. What mate­r­i­al infra­struc­tures and tech­nolo­gies, such as trans­port sys­tems, lab­o­ra­to­ry equip­ment, dig­i­tal plat­forms, satel­lite tech­nolo­gies, and paper or elec­tron­ic report­ing tools, are required for epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance to function?

6. What human com­mu­ni­ties, expert cul­tures, and sci­en­tif­ic net­works are cen­tral to the oper­a­tion and cir­cu­la­tion of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance systems?

7. Who are the often-invis­i­ble tech­ni­cians, inter­me­di­aries, and forms of labour that sus­tain epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance infra­struc­tures, and how is their work organ­ised and valued?

8. What are the tem­po­ral after­lives of epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance infra­struc­tures, includ­ing their per­sis­tence, decay, reuse, or trans­for­ma­tion into new forms and practices?

9. What does epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance pro­duce, beyond the detec­tion of dis­ease itself?

The work­shop will be the occa­sion to iden­ti­fy stand­out con­tri­bu­tions for a forth­com­ing Spe­cial Issue on epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance in the glob­al south, to be pub­lished in a lead­ing jour­nal. The work­shop will be held in per­son, with lim­it­ed hybrid access. It will take place over two days, start­ing at lunchtime on Mon­day 22 Feb­ru­ary and fin­ish­ing late after­noon on Tues­day 23 Feb­ru­ary 2027, at the Cen­tre for the His­to­ry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter. Lunch, coffee/tea and din­ner will be pro­vid­ed. Lim­it­ed funds for trav­el and accom­mo­da­tion will be avail­able if needed.

The dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sions is 30 Sep­tem­ber 2026. Please send a 250-word abstract and author bio to Adedamo­la Adeti­ba (adedamola.adetiba@manchester.ac.uk), Thande­ka Cochrane (thandeka.cochrane@anthro.ox.ac.uk) and David Reubi (david.reubi@kcl.ac.uk). For fur­ther infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Adedamo­la Adeti­ba, Thande­ka Cochrane or David Reubi at the email address­es above.