The social dimensions of the Coronavirus outbreak Epicast

EPICAST is a podcast series about epidemics from Sonar-Global. The aim of this podcast is to explore the social dimensions of infectious diseases outbreaks so that we can get better at controlling them. For this first episode, we will be focusing on the Coronavirus outbreak.
EPICAST is also available on Spotify, Apple Podcast, and Google Podcast.
Speakers
Annie Wilkinson

Annie Wilkinson is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She is an anthropologist and health systems researcher working on: zoonotic disease; epidemic preparedness and control; drug resistance; and urban health. She has worked extensively in West Africa, especially Sierra Leone, and within emergency humanitarian and epidemic response. Her recent research explores health in informal urban settlements and the governance of infection control in complex and rapidly changing health and socio-ecological systems.

Arnaud Fontanet

Arnaud Fontanet is a medical epidemiologist (MD Paris V; DrPH, Harvard School of Public Health, 1993) specialized in infectious diseases epidemiology.  In 2002, he joined Institut Pasteur in Paris to launch the Emerging Diseases Epidemiology unit.  There, his focus has been on viral hepatitis and emerging viruses. In 2014, he was appointed as Director of the newly created Centre for Global Health at Institut Pasteur. Arnaud Fontanet is also Professor of Public Health at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where he is Director and co-founder of the Pasteur-Cnam School of Public Health, and was named in 2018-19 Guest Public Health Professor at the Collège de France.


Biao Xiang

Biao Xiang is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, specializing in migration and social changes in Asia. He is the author of Making Money from Making Order (forthcoming); Global “Body Shopping”; Transcending Boundaries; Return: Nationalizing Transnational Mobility in Asia (lead editor) and numerous articles in both English and Chinese. A number of articles have been translated into Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish and Italian.



Clare Wenham


Clare Wenham is Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her work falls in the cross-over between global health, international relations and epidemiology, focusing in particular on global health security thorough analysis of the Zika and Ebola outbreaks, and more broadly on the governance structures of disease control. Her work features in The Lancet, BMJ, Security Dialogue, International Affairs, BMJ Global Health and Third World Quarterly. At LSE she is the director of the MSc in Global Health Policy at LSE and sits on the steering committee of the LSE Global Health Initiative.

Clare is currently leading a Wellcome Trust funded project to understand the impact of the Zika outbreak on how women access abortion, and in particular medical abortion, and how national regulation in Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador impacted on women’s choices and abortion service providers activity during the health emergency. Clare is also completing a book manuscript offering a feminist critique of global health security through analysis of the Zika outbreak.

She previously worked at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, delivering projects relating to surveillance and transmission of infectious disease. Prior to this she undertook a PhD at the Centre for Health and International Relations at Aberystwyth University examining the tensions between global disease governance and individual state sovereignty. During this time, she was awarded fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, and consulted for the Asian Development Bank. Before starting her academic career, Clare worked in public health policy roles at the Faculty of Public Health and for an NHS Trust.

Leesa Lin

Leesa Lin is a Assistant Professor at the London School of Hygiene &