Vaccines in View: UCL Medical Anthropology Seminar Series

Incorporating pandemic public health, social inequalities, geopolitics, conspiracies and beyond, COVID-19 vaccines find themselves at the centre of the most significant debates of our time.

Anthropologists and social scientists have particularly important voices that need to be heard on this matter and are placed in the unique position of watching noteworthy global events unfold before us. As such, UCL Medical Anthropology invites you to engage with unfolding debates on vaccines and the pandemic through the ‘Vaccines in View Seminar Series’.

The online series will run on zoom every Thursday from 5-6pm BST (GMT+1) over the summer term, featuring a different distinguished invited guest each week to discuss vaccines and vaccinations. Together, the series seeks to develop an anthropological overview of the vaccine question and seek to better bring the myriad issues that we face more clearly into view.

29th April
Andrew Lakoff (University of Southern California)
A Regulatory State of Exception: Vaccines and the Politics of Expertise in the Covid Emergency

6th May
Frédéric Keck (National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) France)
Stockpiling Vaccines, Storing Viruses: the Cryopolitics of SARS-Cov2

13th May
Jens Seeberg (Aarhus University)
The Fight for the Magic Vial: Vaccine Politics, Needs and Infrastructures in Denmark

20th May
Shelley Lees (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)
Anthropological Insights into Vaccine Trial Participation: Lessons for Engaging Publics in Vaccine Deployment

27th May
Ted Fischer (Vanderbilt University)
Values, Vulnerabilities, and Vaccines: Cultural Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

3rd June
Christos Lynteris (University of St Andrews)
Vaccination as Spectacle: Empire, Gender and Photography

10th June
Tamara Giles-Vernick (Institut Pasteur)
The Sonar-Global Network, Vulnerability and Vaccination in the COVID-19 pandemic