Events

Emily Harrison (Harvard, History of Science), "Infant Science and Health Adventuring: Global Intervention around Infant Mortality"

Sandwich lunches are provided. Please RSVP to sts@hks.harvard.edu by Wednesday at 5PM the week before.

Abstract: Infant mortality is a transhistorical phenomenon that has become a central problem of global health and development in the second half of the twentieth century. I am studying the interaction of knowledge, values, and practices around infant mortality during this time, following one individual — an expert in infant mortality reduction employed by the New York City Department of Health, the United States Agency for International Development, and Harvard Medical School from the 1950s through the 1970s — through four sites of globalized intervention where infant mortality was being addressed. This individual consistently referred to the health work she was doing and envisioning for others as “adventure.” She was far from the only one employing the term. In this talk I will discuss the concept of adventuring, as she used it and as it was implicated in various visions for health and development at that time.

Biography: Emily Harrison is a PhD Candidate in the History of Science Department at Harvard University. She holds a prior SM and certification in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Global Health and Population, where her thesis work investigated the politics of measurement in a multi-sited community development program in Rwanda and Uganda. Before beginning her graduate studies, she worked on the editorial board of Scientific American.