Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

As climate change drives West Nile virus into Europe via migratory birds, this paper examines how epidemic threat is constituted through contested knowledge-making. It reveals how expertise about multispecies hypermobility reconfigures across virological, clinical, veterinary, and policy domains.

Paper long abstract

As West Nile virus (WNV) becomes the most significant mosquito-borne pathogen in Europe (Rudolf et al. 2017), its establishment as an epidemic threat reveals how knowledge of climate, biodiversity, and multispecies health is made, lost, and negotiated. This paper examines how WNV transitions from scientific presence to public concern in the Czech Republic, where autochtonous cases have been reported since 2018.

Drawing on document analysis of national and European surveillance reports, media discourse, and policy frameworks, combined with interviews with virologists, epidemiologists, veterinarians, and public health officials, the paper traces how epidemic threat emerges through competing forms of expertise. As migratory birds carry WNV to Europe and climate change accelerates mosquito development and viral transmission, questions arise: whose knowledge counts in determining risk? How is multispecies hypermobility—of viruses, vectors, and hosts—made knowable or remains invisible? What futures are anticipated when monitoring "sleeps" between outbreaks?

The research reveals how knowledge is negotiated between: virologists' laboratory findings and general practitioners' clinical observations; systematic European monitoring frameworks and fragmented Czech implementation; scientific assessments of more-than-human vulnerabilities and political prioritization of human health. These polarizations shape divergent imaginaries of living with climate-driven epidemic emergence—from systematic One Health surveillance to reactive crisis management.

By examining how epidemic threat is constituted across institutional, disciplinary, and species boundaries, this paper demonstrates how (non-)human hypermobility generates contested grounds for environmental health expertise, revealing possibilities for more inclusive and ecologically sensitive approaches to infectious disease preparedness.