Claudia talks to Christos Lynteris, an anthropologist with a long history of researching some of the interconnections between animals and disease. In this episode they focus on rats and the third plague pandemic highlighting how rats went from being understood as in relation to others to being cemented as a vilified species in the spread of disease.

Date Recorded: 29 September 2022

Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics and has pioneered the field of the anthropological study of zoonotic diseases. His most recent book is Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022). He was also a co-author of Sulphuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Fumigation and co-editor of Plague and the City. He is also the leader of the project “The Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis” which you can read more about here. Connect with Christos on Twitter (@VisualPlague) or via the St Andrew’s website (here).

Featured:

Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography by Christos Lynteris
“Scurrying seafarers: shipboard rats, plague, and the land/sea border” by Jules Skotnes-Brown
Sulfuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Fumigation by Lukas Engelmann and Christos Lynteris
Mahamari Plague: Rats, Colonial Medicine and Indiegnous Knowledge in Kumaon and Garwal, India by Christos Lynteris
The Pasteurization of France by Bruno Latour

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A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

Biosecurities Research Collective
The Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research brings together scholars interested in biosecurity.

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S5E4: Epidemiological dividual with Christos Lynteris