Paper short abstract:

Looking to historical epidemics of C. diff in the US and UK and typhoid fever in India, this talk explores how socio-ecological approaches to disease can help us examine the intertwined and multi-scalar factors that influence the emergence, trajectory, and resolution of infectious diseases.

Paper long abstract:

Recent global experiences with large-scale epidemic disease has catalysed an equally seismic shift in thinking about human-environmental relationships. Environmental historians have increasingly called for a re-examination of the methodologies of the field, arguing that we must once again confront the ways that epidemic disease challenge our existing frameworks, and question the epistemological boundaries of health and environment as traditionally delineated in humanistic disciplines (Alagona et al., 2020). However, while many historians have articulated the need for this shift and grappled with theoretical aspects of the collapsing human-nonhuman divide, there have been fewer attempts to write histories that incorporate this shifting epistemology (LeCain, 2016).

This talk will introduce a multidisciplinary methodology for engaging the material environment in the history of epidemics. Drawing on frameworks from ecology, history, anthropology, and public health, it will explore the ways that Niche Construction Theory (NCT) can be adapted to address some of the central limitations of the environmental history of disease. Looking to major epidemics of two gastrointestinal bacteria– a seasonal epidemic of typhoid fever (caused by the bacterium Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi) in Bengaluru, India, in the mid-20th century, and multiple outbreaks of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in the US, Canada, and the UK in 2002 – I argue that a socio-ecological approach grounded in NCT can enrich existing historical methods by providing a scaffolding through which to examine the intertwined and multi-scalar factors that influence the emergence, trajectory, and resolution of an epidemic.