Research projects
The Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis
Led by Profesor Christos Lynteris and funded by the Wellcome Trust with an Investigator Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences “The Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis” (2019-2025) will examine the global history of a foundational but historically neglected process in the development of scientific approaches of zoonosis: the global war against the rat (1898-1948).
The project will explore the synergies between knowledge acquired through medical studies of the rat, in the wake of understanding its role in the transmission of infectious diseases (plague, leptospirosis, murine typhus), with knowledge acquired during the development and application of public health measures of vector-control: rat-proofing, rat-catching and rat-poisoning.
By examining the epistemological, architectural, social, and chemical histories of rat control from a global, comparative perspective, the project will show how new forms of epidemiological reasoning about key zoonotic mechanisms (the epizootic, the disease reservoir, and species invasiveness) arose around the epistemic object of the rat.
India: a laboratory in which dead rats are being examined as part of a plague-prevention programme. Watercolour, by E. Schwarz, 1915/1935, courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
Responsive Images: The Role of Image-Making in Understanding and Addressing Structural and Political Violence
Funded by the Emory University-University of St Andrews Collaborative Research Grant (January 2025 - December 2026) and led by PIs Briana Woods-Jaeger (Emory), Vindhya Buthpitiya (St Andrews) and CoIs: Jessica Glass (Emory), Viviane Saglier (St Andrews), this project aims to advance comparative understandings of shared experiences of collective trauma and structural and political violence among youth in the global north and south. To this end, we will develop participatory visual methods that engage young people in the US and Sri Lanka in lens-based image-making practices to: 1) examine community concerns and engage in community activism through strategies that build awareness and solidarity; 2) explore the process, impact, and knowledge generated using lens-based image making practices; 3) enhance collaborative research and pedagogical approaches to addressing structural and political violence through innovative multidisciplinary methods and analysis; 4) expand the public discourse and understanding of structural and political violence centred on youth perspectives; and 5) build transnational conversations and solidarities relating to structural and political violence.
'Riot': Incitement, Ambivalent Remembrance, and the Visual Remains of Sri Lanka’s Black July Pogrom
Led by Vindhya Lakshmi Buthpitiya and funded by Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland (August 2024-July 2025) the project examines the production and transmission of imagery related to Sri Lanka's 1983 'Black July' pogrom. This episode of mass anti-Tamil violence took place during a period of intense media censorship when the publication of 'incendiary images' that could 'ferment communal instability' had been banned. However, visual records of the violence rapidly entered circulation in Sri Lanka and overseas. Widely held as marking the 'beginning' of the civil war (1983-2009), 'Black July' continues to be re-animated in the postwar present through a repertoire of media imagery. Such remembrance calls attention not to the lives lost but a status quo of enduring state violence against Tamils. This project is a two-fold consideration of the 'incitement' at the intersection of the political and the visual, informed by archival and ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.
Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods
Scottish Research Alliance for Energy, Homes and Livelihoods (2023-2027) is funded by the Scottish Funding Council and led by Professor Mette High (PI). Our vision is for cross-sector collaborative research to help Scotland achieve an equitable and inclusive transition to a net zero future by 2045. Our aim is to foster unprecedented collaboration, coordination, and focus across all sectors of society, creating a research platform for co-design that breaks down silos of knowledge and expertise to tackle the defining challenge of our century. We do this by strengthening capacity for contributions to policymaking at local and national levels in Scotland; building a diverse, interdisciplinary research community that bridges gaps between academia, industry, government, and local communities; organising events, workshops and residentials that can offer training, build expertise and expand networks for our stakeholders; and providing seed funding to drive cross-sectoral research.
Tabulating Epidemics: Tables as Tools of Reasoning in the History of Epidemiology 1896-1940
Funded by a British Academy Small Grant, and led by Dr Lukas Engelmann (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Christos Lynteris (St Andrews) “Tabulating Epidemics” (2022-2025) investigates the impact of tabulation practices and visualisations in the emergence of modern epidemiology (1896-1940).
The hypothesis of the project is that tabulation practices, including ways of visualising data through different table forms, have specifically shaped the research, communication, and epistemology of modern epidemiological reasoning. As a form of collecting, organising and presenting epidemiological data, tabulation has enforced processes of standardisation and classification. As visual devices, tables have enabled epidemiologists to communicate the comparison of populations and tables established multi-factorial association as a hallmark of modern epidemiology. Tables and their associated practices were thus a pivotal ingredient in the epoch-defining transformation of epidemiology from a narrative and historical practice into a field based on formal mathematics, models, data, and quantification.
Times in Crisis, Times of Crisis: The Temporalities of Europe in Polycrisis (TiCToC)
Funded by Humanities in the European Research Area - Collaboration of Humanities and Social Science in Europe (HERA-CHANSE) and led by Daniel M. Knight, Andreas Bandak, Heath Cabot, Vlad Naumescu, Jana Nosková, and Saša Poljak Istenič, TiCToC (2025-2028) explores how living through multiple simultaneous crises shapes our perception of time. The project includes partner institutions in Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Norway and Slovenia, as well as engaging with 6 non-academic partners in the realm of film, theatre, museum and archival work. Research will take place on the time-crisis pivot in the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia.
Times of Polycrisis in the UK and Europe (TOP)
Funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Daniel Knight, TOP (2025-2029) interrogates the claim that we are living in unprecedented times. It focuses on building qualitative research on strands of the so-called 'unprecedented polycrisis'. Fieldwork will take place in the United Kingdom on the cost of living crisis, Greece/Turkey on energy security, and Eastern Europe on humanitarianism. By examining these crises through the lenses of political rhetoric, social complexity, communication technology, and historical consciousness, the project will interrogate both 'unprecedented' and 'polycrisis' and their sociopolitical implications.
The Role of Bioplastics, Social Plastics, and Just Plastics in a Circular Economy
This 4+3 year UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) is led by Dr Patrick O'Hare. It investigates the confluence of circular and social economies and focuses on the recycled plastics trade and new legal frameworks that enables wastepicker cooperatives and associations to take leading roles in the recovery, recycling, and development of new products from post-consumer and post- industrial plastics. More broadly, the research project explores theories of innovation and circular economy from below, and the capacity of theorisations of the circular economy to incorporate elements of equity and social justice. Whilst Patrick conducts fieldwork in Colombia and Uruguay, project post-doc Matteo Saltalippi is focusing on Ecuador and Italy. The research is co-designed with the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, whom Patrick and Matteo have also been supporting through various rounds of negotiations to develop a legally-based Global Plastics Treaty (GPT).
TRACTS: Trace as a research agenda for climate change, technology studies, and social justice
Dr Aimée Joyce is the Chair of TRACTS (CA0134) a COST Action (2021–2025) funded by the EU that brings together scholars from disciplines of the social sciences and humanities with artists, decolonial activists, and memorialization experts to bridge current cultural, political and geographical gaps in research on traces.
The aim of this network is to reformulate the state-of-the-art in the research on traces through interdisciplinary networking and research coordination. An inclusive network on traces in the context of the current pressing challenges of social justice, climate change and technology can inform transformative research agendas and create new paradigms in the social sciences and humanities in Europe and beyond. The network has established links across the existing literature and research and is identifying new directions for those of us working with traces, be they scholarly, practical, or experimental.
Past projects
Developing Effective Rodent Control Strategies to Reduce Disease Risk in Ecologically and Culturally Diverse Rural Landscapes
Professor Christos Lynteris was the co-investigator of a three-year research project (2021-2024) funded by the UKRI/Medical Research Council. The project aimed to reduce the risk from rodent- borne infections and improve health and well-being by increasing the capacity to develop rodent- control measures that are sustainable and resilient given local ecological, epidemiological, agricultural and socio-cultural contexts. The project focused on three zoonoses with contrasting epidemiological cycles, plague, leptospirosis and rickettsioses, and worked with rural communities in Tanzania and Madagascar.
Eco Worrier, Eco Warrior: Exploring Eco-Anxiety and Climate Activism in Britain
Eco-Worrier, Eco-Warrior was led by Dr Bridget Bradley from November 2020-July 2021 and was funded by the Scottish Funding Council (SFC/AN/08/020). The project aimed to find out how anxiety, distress and grief about the environment affects daily life for individuals across generations and within families. The team considered how anxiety might shape perceptions of the future for people of different ages, and investigated the relationship between climate anxiety and participation in climate-related work, protests and activism. Using online interviews, focus groups and participant observation in special events, the project explored how the new and emerging label of eco-anxiety was viewed by activists, and whether or not this new term led to the formation of support networks.
Energy Ethics
Dr Mette M High was the principal investigator of a six-year research project funded by the European Research Council on finance moralities and environmental politics in the global oil economy. The project involved a team of researchers, including Pauline Destree and Sean Field, exploring ethnographically how multiple and conflicting valuations of oil intersect and inform global markets. Collectively, the research team considered how the production, distribution, consumption and waste of energy relates to what people consider to be right or good. Applying insights and methods from anthropology and beyond, this project focused on people as well as resources. Attending to people’s own perceptions of and direct involvement in energy economies, it developed a truly novel framework for understanding the relationship between oil, money and climate change.
Ethnographic Horizons: Time and the Ethnographic Horizon in Moments of Crisis
The Centre for Pacific Studies explored the time horizons that inform people's perceptions of crisis. The project ran for three years and was supported by the International Balzan Foundation, as part of the 2018 Balzan Prize in Social Anthropology awarded to Marilyn Strathern.
The Balzan Research Project responded to a conundrum at the heart of Social Anthropology. First-hand research is central to the fashioning of ethnography through fieldwork, yet always brings with it a specific temporal horizon. The ethnographer's present is not always the best vantage point from which to apprehend the nature of contemporary issues, notably with respect to perceptions of life in crisis. The Balzan research project supported one PhD student and four postdoctoral researchers.
Listening to the Zoo
Dr Adam Reed was co-investigator on a project entitled 'Listening to the Zoo', funded by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Transformative Research grant award. The principal investigator, Dr Tom Rice, and the rest of the project team were based at the University of Exeter.
This project brought together scholars from anthropology, anthrozoology and bioacoustics to consider the soundscapes of zoos. This included a consideration of the diverse acoustic ranges of different captive species, the impact of human-created sound or 'noise' on animal welfare, the role of listening in visitor experiences of the zoo and in the care of captive species by keepers. The project worked with two zoos in southern England: Paignton Zoo in South Devon and Bristol Zoo.
Rebellions and Alliances in Latin America
Funded by a three-year research project grant from the Leverhulme Trust, Professor Mark Harris studied the past of contemporary societies of the Brazilian Amazon. The project sought lessons for the future that can benefit those who strive to build a fair and sustainable society. The project built on the success of the Centre of Amerindian and Latin American Studies (CAS) in combining the anthropological and historical study of the region.
This project was further consolidated through a British Academy and Leverhulme Senior Fellowship, focusing on the development and change that arose in relation to colonial rule in riverine societies along the Brazilian Amazon. While previous histories had separated people by period, ethnicity or nationhood, they were brought together by the river. The Amazon itself was key to their identity, and the project thus asked "what kinds of societies form along rivers?"
Ferdinand Denis (1798-1890). "Desenhos a grafite copiados das clássicas obras dos viajantes e que serviram para ilustrar a obra “Bresil par Ferdinand Denis. Colombie et Guyanes", par M.C. Famin. ©Biblioteca Nacional (Brasil)
Renewable Energy and Extractive Economies in the Greek Economic Crisis
The Leverhulme Trust funded a three-year project carried out by Dr Daniel Knight that focused on the temporal complexity of renewable energy initiatives in austerity Greece. Since 2011, the Greek government has advocated renewable energy generation and export as a way to repay national debt and decrease deficit. The project explored the impact of multinational investment in photovoltaic parks on the Plain of Thessaly, Greece, where impoverished farmers have ceased crop cultivation in favour of energy production. Yet energy generated on farmland rarely benefits the local community.
The project considered the extent to which renewable energy projects are seen as new forms of extractive economy, harnessing local natural resources for the benefit of foreign corporations. It thus addressed how economic uncertainty has created dynamic spaces for entrepreneurial opportunism while renewables are locally perceived as neo-colonial programs and new extractive economies.
Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic
Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic (VR3PP) (@visualplague) was an interdisciplinary research project led by Professor Christos Lynteris (Principal Investigator) and funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564) with 1.49 million Euros (HI 2013-2017, CRASSH, University of Cambridge; 2017-2018 Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews). The project engaged in the analysis of the global and local histories of the visual representation of the third plague pandemic (1894-1959), and the role they played in the formation of scientific understandings and public perception of infectious disease epidemics in the modern era. The project has shown that plague photography contributed to the emergence of epidemic photography as a distinct photographic genre, and to the emergence and consolidation of the concept and experience of the "pandemic".
