Date: 14 December 2018 (Friday)
Time: 11:00am–11:45am
Venue: CPD 2.58, 2/F The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Global Health in the Anthropocene? The History of (and History in) Planetary Health by Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney/Harvard University)

Description:
In the twenty-first century it has become clear that the health of human and other animal
populations is inextricably linked to the health of the planet. With the support of the Lancet and
international philanthropic foundations, this formulation of ‘planetary health’ has begun to
infiltrate schools of public health and erupt in public discourse. But this is not the first time that
human disease has been connected to environmental degradation and climatic conditions. I want to explore here the relations of twentieth-century medical geography, disease ecology, and planetary thinking to emergent planetary health. Such a critical genealogy helps to clarify the differences in method, scope, and span between planetary health, as it might become, and competitors such as global health, EcoHealth and OneHealth. In thus mapping the incipient conceptual terrain, we need to reflect not only on histories of planetary health, but also on history in planetary health.

About the Speaker:
Warwick Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance, and Ethics in the Department of History and the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. In 2018-19, he is also Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair of Australian Studies in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University. The author of four prize-winning books in the history of modern science and medicine—including most recently (with Ian R. Mackay) Intolerant Bodies: A Short History of Autoimmunity (2014)—he is completing a monograph on the history of twentieth-century disease ecology.