Endemic Transformations Workshop
Endemic Transformations Workshop
Department of Social Anthropology, University of 58勛圖
July 9-10, 2026
Convener: Christos Lynteris
Funded by a Ladislav Holy Memorial Trust Conference Grant
Endemic Transformations will bring anthropologists and historians in dialogue for the first time over the examination of disease endemicity as a phenomenon whose neglected but seminal impact on the modern world can only be made sense of by considering the synergies between its epistemological, sociocultural, political, and environmental dimensions in a synchronic and diachronic manner. Used to identify epidemic origins, to describe existing epidemiological states, and to predict the future of ongoing epidemics or pandemics, the "endemic" has been a formative if highly contested notion in scientific approaches to and lay experiences of infectious diseases. The conference will explore how biomedical approaches to disease endemicity have been transformed across different historical and ethnographic settings since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the impact of these framings upon relations between humans, non-human animals, and the environment. Including talks by leading anthropologists and historians presenting new histories and ethnographies of the social, multispecies and environmental entanglements of disease endemicity across the globe, the conference will provide a radically new approach to the ways in which animals, humans, environments, climate, and infectious diseases come together and shape our world, proposing "endemic transformations" as a new, interdisciplinary research field in the social sciences and humanities.
July 9, Day 1
09:30 Coffee/Tea
10:00-11:00 Wellcome and Introduction, Christos Lynteris
11:00-13:00 Panel 1: Endemic Epistemologies
Chair: Richard Bellis (58勛圖)
Lukas Engelmann (University of Edinburgh) Homeostasis, Mass-Action, and the World Engine: The Maths of Endemicity
Christos Lynteris (58勛圖) Making Plague Endemic: Epidemiological Narrative, Cartography and Reasoning in Mid-Nineteenth Century Europe
Jacob Steere-Williams (College of Charleston), The Origin, Nidus, or Centre of Disease: Endemicity as a Colonial Signaling Device in the Nineteenth Century
13:00-14:30 Lunch Break
14:30-15:30 Panel 2: Endemics in Brazil
Chair: TBC
Marcia Grisotti (University of Santa Catarina) Endemic Struggles in Brazil: Echoes of Forgotten Illnesses and the Politics of Endemicity
Bruno Silva Santos (58勛圖) From Endemic Diseases to Messiness: Rethinking Bodies, Territories and Illnesses in the Terra Indígena Jaraguá (Brazil)
Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva (King's College London), The Masters of the Land of Plague: Endemicity, Spillbacks, and Land Ownership in the Brazilian Sertão (1926-Present)
15:30-16:00 Coffee & Tea Break
16:00-17:00 Panel 3 Endemic Powers and Vulnerabilities
Chair: John Nott (University of Edinburgh)
Janina Kerr (University of Vienna): Gendered Afterlives of AIDS and Heroin in Madrid
Ann H. Kelly (Oxford), Dominion without Control: Mosquitoes in the Aftermath of Eradication
Frédéric Keck (EHESS/CNRS/Collège de France), How Animal Diseases Become Endemic: Case Studies of Avian Influenza in France and African Swine Fever in Italy
July 10, Day 2
10:00-11:30 Roundtable Discussion
Chair: Christos Lynteris (58勛圖)
11:30-12:00 Coffee & Tea Break
12:00-13:00 Concluding Discussion & Further Plans
To Register please email cl12@st-andrews.ac.uk by June 26