Re-thinking pandemic preparedness
This event will explore the current landscape of pandemic preparedness, who it serves and what learnings can be taken from social science research to better inform future preparedness.
This hybrid lunchtime seminar asks: Who is being prepared for what, and by whom? What can we learn about pandemic preparedness from people living with multiple health-related uncertainties in African settings? How and why is it so important to re-think the relationship between academic research and official pandemic preparedness policies and practice?
Contributors to this event will draw on long term ethnographic fieldwork carried out in parts of Sierra Leone, Senegal and Uganda between 2018-2023. Their fieldwork was co-designed and conducted in close engagement with local communities or in dialogue with African scientists and public health actors, as part of a Wellcome collaborative award on Pandemic Preparedness. Many of them have contributed to a recently published special issue on Pandemic Preparedness in the Journal of Biosocial Science or have contributed to separate project-related publications.
Speakers & talk titles
- Preparedness from below: A useful heuristic?
- Pandemic futures, future preparedness
Hayley MacGregor, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
- Popular scepticism about vaccines for COVID-19 in Sierra Leone
- Ebola and COVID-19 in comparative perspective
Paul Richards, Esther Mokuwa, Foday Kamara, Marion Nyakoi, Njala University, Sierra Leone
- ‘We want cassava, not COVID-19 vaccines’: the politics of vaccination in Uganda
- Epidemics and the military
Bob Okello, Melissa Parker, Moses Baluku, Bono Ozunga, Peter Kermundu, LSHTM
- Re-thinking pandemic preparedness: the implications for policy and practice
Catherine Grant, Institute for Development Studies, University of Sussex
Event notices
- Please note that you can join this event in person or you can join the session remotely
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