VeranstaltungsortOnlineVeranstalter Institut für Geographie und RegionalforschungBeschreibungThe pandemic of Covid-19 has brought home the dangers posed by so-calledemerging infectious diseases (EIDs) and the importance of embracing“one health” perspectives. In an era of increased global connectivity, growingurban and extra-urban populations and changing land-used patterns,we are told, epidemics and pandemics due to novel zoonoses spilling overinto human populations are to be expected. But where did this modernecological understanding of infectious disease come from, and how doesit relate to older understandings of the genesis of pandemics and earlierscientific traditions, such as medical ecology and medical geography?In this talk, I briefly revisit the writings of three pioneers of disease ecology– the bacteriologist Charles Nicolle, the geographer Jacques May and themicrobiologist René Dubos –and briefly trace their influence on other keythinkers in this emergent field, such as Steven Morse and Joshua Lederberg.Whether or not the ideas of these early disease ecologists were couchedin explicitly ecological language, I argue they all shared a vision of diseaseas the result of the disturbances of “natural” equilibrium states and aphenomenon that could not be understood apart from the environment andthe places where people and pathogens interacted. However, while this ledsome thinkers to embrace modern evolutionary perspectives and to draw asharper boundary between medical geography and disease ecology, othersemphasized the importance of place and environment over long evolutionarytimescales and insisted on the fields being continuous with one another.Vortragende(r)Vortragender: Mark Honigsbaum (London)Kommentar: Jonathan Everts (Halle)Moderation: Simon Runkel (Jena)KontaktUniv.-Prof. Dr. Matthias Naumann (Matthias.Naumann@aau.at)