Call for Papers - Zoonotic Collecting: Perspectives from the Humanities, Social Sciences and Life Science

30 January 2024

The Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis project invite paper proposals for its 4th annual conference on the theme of Zoonotic Collecting: Perspectives from the Humanities, Social Sciences and Life Science. Convened by Drs Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva and Jules Skotnes-Brown and funded by the Wellcome Trust, the conference will take place in person in St Andrews on June 24 and 25 2024.

Bringing together perspectives from the history and anthropology of medicine, museum studies, animal studies, ecology, and other disciplines, this conference seeks to understand the relationships between collecting (broadly construed) and zoonosis. In so doing, it aims to chart how collecting has been linked with medical and health questions; the material, epistemological, and political lives of medical collections; and how collecting in times of outbreaks, epidemics, and even pandemics has shaped the lives of humans, plants, microbes, animals, and insects. We welcome submissions on zoonotic collections and collecting from any discipline.