Epidemiology is commonly known as a statistical field, concerned with surveillance, gathering and the accurate account of data on morbidity, mortality, and any kind of correlating factor that might illuminate the measurement of an epidemic. Epidemic modelling, Dr Engelmann argues in this paper, has introduced a way of reasoning that posed a formidable challenge to the empirical art of epidemiology and has subsequently gained significant authority public health policy; particularly in the twenty-first century.
This paper will focus on two important moments of this history. First, Dr Engelmann recalls how the zoologist Roy Anderson and the theoretical ecologist Robert May collaboratively set epidemiology on new, mathematical foundations from the viewpoint of predator-prey relationships and (animal) population biology. Second, he will trace how Anderson and May embraced the positive response from human epidemiologists on their immensely popular paper in Nature (1979) and began to develop an ambitious intervention into the epidemiology of HIV/AIDS from 1985 onwards. The contested and highly politicised epidemiology of HIV/AIDS became thus a prominent test case to institutionalise epidemic modelling as supposedly neutral crisis technology.
About the speaker
Dr Lukas Engelmann is Senior Lecturer of History and Sociology of Biomedicine at The University of Edinburgh’s School of Social and Political Science. He is a historian of medicine and epidemiology. His research covers histories of epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and the third plague pandemic (1890-1950), the history of epidemiological reasoning as well as the digital transformation of public health in the present. His current project ‘The Epidemy‘ seeks to understand how epidemiologists have built their arguments, how they define epidemics and what makes this kind of reasoning unique. He has developed a pilot study with Bea Alex, funded by the Challenge Investment Funds (UoE), to evaluate pathways for Text-Mining Outbreak Reports of the Third Plague Pandemic.
This seminar is part of the The Measurement in the History of Medicine Lecture Series, co-hosted by the Measurement Lab of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities and the Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease.
This event is free to attend, please reserve your space via Eventbrite.
