“SISS meets early careers”
A seminar series organized by the Italian Society for the History of Science
2nd series 2025
4.30pm CET

29th April 2025

Dr Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)

Title - When Infectious Diseases Became Wild: Plague, Yellow Fever, and Disease Ecology in the Brazilian Hinterland (1920-1975)

Abstract:
Between 1920 and 1975, Brazil was pitted against an unprecedented sanitary phenomenon. Plague and yellow fever, two urban diseases, progressively advanced towards the Brazilian hinterland, where they infected rural populations and wild animals, such as rodents, marsupials, and primates. The history of diseases moving from cities to wild spaces complexifies current mainstream interpretations about emerging infectious diseases. Exploring this difference, in this presentation I will ask: which knowledge about diseases becoming wild emerged in Brazil? How did Brazilian health authorities control these wild diseases? What were the social and environmental consequences of anti-wild disease measures in Brazil? In reconstructing the epistemological, political, social, and environmental dimensions of wild diseases in Brazil, this presentation aims to complexify the global history of disease ecology.

Bio: Matheus Alves Duarte da Silva is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom. His research focuses on the global history of microbiology, tropical medicine, and disease ecology. He has co-edited the books Beyond Science and Empire (Routledge 2023) and Rural Disease Knowledge (Routledge, 2024).