12 October 2023 Seminar: Cholera & Spanish Flu in the Philippines

masv on 9. October 2023

For the next Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Fall 2023 series, we are pleased to welcome Professor Francis Gealogo (Ateneo de Manila University). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 12 October at the normal time (1600 CEST). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

The Cholera Epidemic of 1903-05 and the 1918 influenza pandemic were one of the most virulent epidemics ever to hit the American-occupied Philippines.  The impact of the contagion was felt unevenly by the population of the islands, with some populations becoming more vulnerable to the disease compared to others.

The presentation analyzes the environmental and ecological dimensions of the spread of the disease, and the attempts by different sectors to contain the epidemic, or mitigate its impact for those already affected by the outbreak.  Specifically, the paper will assess the pandemics as experienced in prison populations, leper colonies, and military camps as examples of confined populations and rural ethnic communities, urban and suburban communities as examples of unconfined populations.  The official government actions as well as the people’s perception about the pandemics in these population types will also be analyzed in order to advance the evaluation on the social dimension in the history of this pandemic from the prism of medical and demographic history.   Finally, the paper will present the Philippine experience during the cholera and influenza pandemic and  contextualize them as part of the Philippine colonial experience under the United States.

About the Speaker

Francis A. Gealogo is Professor and former Chairman of the Department of History of Ateneo de Manila University and former Commissioner of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines. He currently holds the Horacio de la Costa Professorial Chair in History at the Ateneo de Manila. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in History (cum laude), Master of Arts in History and PhD in Philippine Studies, major in History from the University of the Philippines Diliman. He was Fulbright Senior Fellow at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and was Rene Descartes Senior Fellow for the History and Philosophy of Science and the Humanities at the Utrecht University, the Netherlands. His article “The Philippines in the World of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19” was awarded as one of the Most Outstanding Scientific Papers of the National Academy of Science and Technology. He served as Editor of the Diliman Review and Managing Editor of Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints and served as Associate Director for Research at the Ateneo Institute of Philippine Culture. He is currently Secretary of the History of Medicine in Southeast Asia (HOMSEA); Vice President of Ibon International, and Lead Convenor of Tanggol Kasaysayan, an organization of historians, researchers, and professors of history campaigning against negative historical revisionism. His semi-regular column BALIKSAYSAY is appearing in the alternative media outfit Bulatlat.

Please meet Elisabeth Wrigley-Field, a PANSOC Visiting Research Program Scholar 2023-24

masv on 6. October 2023

The PANSOC visiting researcher program for the academic year 2023-24 have selected two researchers. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field | Minnesota Population Center (umn.edu) and Merle Eisenberg | Oklahoma State University (okstate.edu).

While Merle Eisenberg is joining us in May 2024, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field has been visiting PANSOC for the past few weeks and is staying a total of one month this fall. Wrigley-Field is a mortality demographer who studies social stratification in United States mortality in two contexts where infectious disease risk changed radically: the early twentieth century, when disease risk was falling but was punctuated by the terribly destructive 1918 flu pandemic, and the Covid-19 pandemic as it has evolved over the past several years.

Here at OsloMet, she is working with PANSOC researchers to develop new strategies to unravel an old puzzle: why did mortality to many other respiratory diseases, especially tuberculosis, fall so dramatically after the 1918 flu? Wrigley-Field is using her skills in social history and mathematical modeling to identify new empirical and modeling tests of the leading hypotheses, and is benefitting from the broad interdisciplinary discussions at PANSOC: its webinar series, journal club, and regular brainstorming sessions with pandemic researchers from across the social and biological sciences.

While here, she was awarded the Milbank Quarterly Early Career Award in Population Health from the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science in the United States.

New guest researcher: Lauren Steele

masv on 2. October 2023

Laureen Steele is PhD candidate at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Her PhD thesis is looking at how host factors impacted disease severity during historical influenza pandemics, to inform on future pandemic preparedness. Steele is interested in host factors such as age, BMI, indigeneity, and prior infection history.

In the Fall of 2022, Steele was invited to join the project Social Science Meets Biology | CAS (cas-nor.no) at CAS (Centre for Advanced Study) in Oslo for several months to work on a paper describing the effect of measles on 1918 influenza outcomes in soldiers who fought in WW1.

This Fall, Steele has been invited back to Oslo to collaborate with researchers at PANSOC looking at age patterns of mortality during the influenza pandemics of the 20th Century.

21 September 2023 Seminar: Political Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic

masv on 19. September 2023

For the fourth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Fall 2023 series, we are pleased to welcome Professor Erik Hornung (University of Cologne). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 21 September at the normal time (1600 CEST). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract (Working paper)

How do health crises affect election results? We combine a panel of election results from 1893–1933 with spatial heterogeneity in excess mortality due to the 1918 Influenza to assess the pandemic’s effect on voting behavior across German constituencies. Applying a dynamic differences-in-differences approach, we find that areas with higher influenza mortality saw a lasting shift towards left-wing parties. We argue that pandemic intensity increased the salience of public health policy, prompting voters to reward parties signaling competence in health issues. Alternative explanations such as pandemic-induced economic hardship, punishment of incumbents for inadequate policy responses, or polarization of the electorate towards more extremist parties are not supported by our findings.

About the Speaker

Erik Hornung is Professor of Economic History at the University of Cologne, a Research Fellow of the CESifo and CAGE, and a Research Affiliate of the CEPR. He is also Associate Editor of The Economic Journal and a member of the Editorial Boards of The Journal of Economic History and Explorations in Economic History. His research focuses on economic history and long-run development, particularly through analysis of historically important events that determine differences in development over time and space.

Serendipity & stamina in pandemic research

masv on 18. September 2023

Our Centre leader, Prof. Svenn-Erik Mamelund, held a talk at the Letten Seminar of 2023 at the Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo on September 7. You can now watch the recordings of his talk here.

14 September 2023 Seminar: Plague and Bronze Age Migrations

masv on 11. September 2023

For the third Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Fall 2023 series, we are pleased to welcome Rebecca Main (University of Stirling). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 14 September at the normal time (1600 CEST). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

As one of the oldest and deadliest diseases encountered by humans, plague, caused by Yersinia pestis bacteria, provides an excellent opportunity to advance our understanding of how infectious diseases emerge, persevere, and infect humans for centuries or millennia. The talk introduces the audience to the research project and presents a case study of plague dispersal in two distantly separated regions of the Eurasian steppe – the North Caucasus and Altai-Sayan – during the period of Early Bronze Age human migrations.

About the Speaker

Alongside her positions as Research Assistant and Programme Tutor, Rebecca Main is a doctoral researcher at the University of Stirling. Her research historicises non-textual, palaeoscientific data to determine the natural forces (climate and ecological change) and human activities (mobility and migration, trade, economy, and conflict) responsible for the emergence and spread of Yersinia pestis (plague) in Neolithic and Bronze Age Eurasia. Her research interests are in all-things ancient, delving into evolutionary genetics as well as prehistoric culture, disease, demography, diet, migration, and environmental change.