The Global Governance of Infectious Disease:
Risk, Surveillance and Regulation
Symposium
10-11 September 2008
Newcastle University, UK
Expressions of interest for participation are invited by 31st January, 2008. Please send: name, affiliation, suggested title of paper / area of interest to: Andrew Donaldson <[log in to unmask]> and David Murakami Wood <[log in to unmask]>.
The entanglement of infectious diseases (of both humans and animals) with the material networks of the globalizing is a matter of increasing concern. Foot and Mouth Disease has shown that an animal disease can cause major disruption to the normal social and economic workings of a modern state. SARS showed the speed with which deadly disease could transcend national borders in a connected world. The threat of a new global flu pandemic, and the linking of this to avian influenza, has demonstrated that the boundaries that might be transgressed are more than just territorial. How should we understand, control or avoid the mobilities of such diseases on a global scale?
This symposium is targeted mainly at human geographers and social scientists in cognate areas of sociology, science studies, public health and politics. We will have participants from relevant policy or regulatory bodies, but aim to sketch a strategic and critical social science agenda that is not driven by immediate policy / applied concerns but which nevertheless can contribute to improved wellbeing.
The cost of the event will be no more than: £150 for full-time, £100 for postgraduates. This will be a non-residential event, so you will need to find your own accommodation (a full list of options will be provided).
There will be three sequential sessions focusing on three types of site at which diseases are constructed as issues, problems and objects of knowledge in different ways, but with the themes of regulation, risk and surveillance running through all three. A central point of the symposium is to identify the things 'in-between' the various domains involved in disease, including those things which bridge the nonhuman/human divide.
Farmyard, Clinic and Lab
This session will focus on the activities which occur at sites of direct interaction between disease and healthcare professionals, and the ways in local interactions connect with other scales. Comparison between human and animal medicine could provide useful insights in this area. Possible topics will include:
* Diagnosis and disease surveillance
* Local knowledges
* Organisation and knowledge exchange
Models
This session will focus on the way in which diseases are represented, simulated, predicted and anticipated through the use of statistical analysis, computer modelling, mapping and more basic field surveillance techniques. Increasingly advanced modelling techniques are at the heart of disease prevention and control, but in the words of statistician George Box "All models are wrong" so we need to put them into context. Possible topics will include:
* Fieldwork vs models
* Data collection and coordination
* Communication and controversy
Institutions and Circulations
This session will focus on the interaction of diseases and their representations with global political and economic structures, organizations and processes. The maintenance and dismantling of borders and bounded territories in the face of multiple flows and mobilities is a concern in many areas of strategic planning, policy making and regulation. When considering infectious diseases the following are possible topics:
* Transnational organizations
* Trade and (making and unmaking) boundaries
* Measures for global surveillance and intervention
* Travel, consumption and risk
Organising Committee:
Andrew Donaldson, CRE, Newcastle
David Murakami Wood, GURU, Newcastle
Valerie November, EPFL, Switzerland
Abigail Woods, Imperial College, London
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