Claudia talks to Christos Lynteris, an anthropologist with a long history of researching some of the interconnections between animals and disease. In this episode they focus on rats and the third plague pandemic highlighting how rats went from being understood as in relation to others to being cemented as a vilified species in the spread of disease.
Date Recorded: 29 September 2022
Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics and has pioneered the field of the anthropological study of zoonotic diseases. His most recent book is Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022). He was also a co-author of Sulphuric Utopias: A History of Maritime Fumigation and co-editor of Plague and the City.He is also the leader of the project “The Global War Against the Rat and the Epistemic Emergence of Zoonosis” which you can read more about here. Connect with Christos on Twitter (@VisualPlague) or via the St Andrew’s website (here).
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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. Learn more on our website.