Lecture | Global Histories of Knowledge Seminar
Southeast Asia as method, History as prevention Decentering the history of measles (to better control the disease?)
- Date
- Thursday 16 April 2026
- Time
- Series
- Global Histories of Knowledge 2025 - 2026
- Location
-
Herta Mohr
Witte Singel 27A
2311 BG Leiden - Room
- 0.28
Abstract
Measles is “back”. The culprit? According to the media and many public health experts, an “epidemic” of vaccine hesitancy. Included in the WHO’s list of 10 main threats to global health in 2019, on the eve of the first case of COVID-19, the phenomenon is considered to be fueled by social media and exacerbated in the era of Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement. This explanation is simplistic and problematic. In my presentation, I will look back at the co-production of the viral disease and mass vaccination (measles is a vaccine-preventable disease since 1963), to make two main arguments: 1) the importance of looking at measles “from below and from the South”, and from (mainland) Southeast Asia and a Southeast Asianist perspective in particular, to understand the factors at work in the recurrent “resurgences” of the viral infection; 2) the need to mobilize the discipline of History not only to understand the present of the disease but also to act on its future control, what I call “History as prevention”.
Speaker
A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Laurence Monnais is a professor of the history of medicine and public health at the Vaud University Hospital (CHUV) and the Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne in Switzerland. A specialist of contemporary mainland Southeast Asia, she has worked on the history of colonial medicine, the anthropology of pharmaceuticals, health practices of Southeast Asian migrants in Canada (where she has been based for over 25 years), and, more recently, on a global history of measles. She is the director of the publishing house Editions BHMS, the editor-in-chief of an online medical humanities journal Soin, Sens, Santé, and the co-founder and president of HOMSEA, an association promoting the history of medicine in Southeast Asia since 2006.
Organisation
This guest lecture is jointly organised by the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and the Leiden University Institute for History.
Registration (required)
Registration, via the web form on this page, is required as seating is limited.
Registration deadline: Tuesday, 14 April.