LSHTM hybrid lecture: Visualising spaces of pestilence: Malaria and the natural environment in late colonial India
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) invites you to the Hybrid seminar from the Malaria Centres series on “Visualising spaces of pestilence: Malaria and the natural environment in late colonial India”.
Date: 18th of March, 2025.
Time: 12:45-14:00 UK time
Location: Hybrid. G40, LSHTM, Keppel Street, London.
This talk examines how images generated by scientific research on malaria became an integral part of this re-evaluation of the colonial government’s approaches towards public health and hygiene. Dealing with the malaria surveys conducted under British rule between 1900 and 1940, the talk addresses how images informed the understanding of malarial infestations, the collection and examination of mosquitoes, and the dialogues surrounding anti-malarial operations. In so doing, the paper specifically addresses the relationship between malarial survey reports and bureaucratic documents, to track how the colonial government promoted and deployed scientific illustrations and photographs relating to the disease. The result is a chequered history of how the responses to pestilence reshaped colonial natural environments, wherein imagery allows one to probe the complexities of the legacies of British imperialism within medicine and healthcare.
Speaker:
- Dr Apurba Chatterjee
Apurba Chatterjee is a Research Support Officer at Kingston University. Prior to this, she held a Wellcome Trust Humanities and Social Science Fellowship at the University of Reading. She is a historian of colonialism in British India, who specialises in the histories of science, medicine, and visual culture. Her research explores the visual regimes of medicine in late colonial India, with a focus on malaria.
Read here for more information.
