It’s a Ramadhan morning in the port city of Mombasa, early April 2023. I’m standing behind an audience of about 100 people who have turned up to a makeshift stage on the edge of the neighbourhood of Old Town. A performance of Lisemwalo Lipo: A play about vaccine rumours is in full swing.
Why should the figure of the middleman matter for scholars of global health? The short answer is: they are impossible to avoid. The long answer is as follows: Throughout the twenty-first century, claims have circulated that the global pharmaceutical supply chain is awash with fakes, and these claims sparked our curiosity. For nearly a decade, […]
The 2022 Mpox outbreak in the Global North disrupted the temporality of epidemics amid an uncertain recovery from COVID-19. Immediately associated with men who have sex with men, the outbreak interpellated the queer communities into action—for example, through participation in vaccination campaigns—and reactivated the collective memory of HIV/AIDS. This outbreak thus revealed an intricate form […]
Noemi Tousignant, Associate Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London, in conversation with Shagufta Bhangu, Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London. In this episode, we hear from Noemi Tousignant about the history of knowledge production, vaccine trials and economic infrastructures which help us […]
