Human Dimensions of Infectious Disease is a new initiative at Virginia Tech connecting programs across the university concerned with the impact of  infectious diseases on individuals and communities.

Winter 2024 Research Colloquium 

Visiting Scholar Dr. Jessica Otis is an Assistant Professor of History and the Director of Public Projects at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. She received her MS in Mathematics and PhD in History from the University of Virginia, and spent four years in the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries as a CLIR-DLF Postdoctoral Fellow and Digital Humanities Specialist. Her research focuses on the cultural history of mathematics, plague, and cryptography in early modern England, and she has particular methodological expertise in network analysis. She has a deep interest in how to make digital humanities projects more accessible and long-term sustainable. In her spare time, she renovates houses and spoils cats.

More information: faculty website / projects / book / death by numbers

February 1, 2024

Location: Newman Library Goddall Room (101); Zoom webinar (https://virginiatech.zoom.us/s/89964543462)

Research workshop
9-11 am (open to all, registration required, link to register)
This workshop will explore research methods for studying vulnerable, marginalized, or minoritized populations in context of infectious disease outbreaks. The workshop will be an opportunity to faculty to discuss related issues and provide guidance on methods and outcomes.  Confirmed workshop participants include:
Rebecca Hester, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, Virginia Tech  (website)
Jessica Otis, Department of History and Art History,  George Mason University (website)
Edward  Polanco, Department of History, Virginia Tech  (website)
John Aggrey, Department of Science, Technology, and Society (website)
Tom Ewing, Department of History, Virginia Tech  (website) 

The workshop is open to all. Those planning to attend are encouraged to register, using the form linked here, if you would like your name and research interests to be shared with those presenting and attending. Eligible faculty may earn Professional Development Network (PDN) credit by enrolling in the Canvas course linked here.

Distinguished Lecture
Jessica Otis, "Death By Numbers," 12:30-1:30 pm (open to all)
Center for Emerging Zoonotic and Arthropod-borne Pathogens (CeZAP) Distinguished Speaker Series in Infectious Diseases: https://infectiousdisease.fralinlifesci.vt.edu/Seminar.html
This talk is based upon the Death by Numbers project funded by the National Science Foundation: "One of the most dreaded diseases in early modern England was plague, which was present in the British Isles from 1348 until 1679. The most well-documented epidemics of the early modern era were in England’s cities, particularly London, which suffered six major epidemics in the century between 1563 and 1665, and lost an estimated 225,000 people to plague. Government officials attempted to quantify the severity of various plague outbreaks and, starting in 1603, published London’s weekly mortality statistics in broadside series known as the Bills of Mortality. The bills grew to include not just plague deaths but also dozens of other causes of death, such as childbirth, measles, syphilis, and suicide, ensuring their continued publication for decades after the final outbreak of plague in England. The weekly bills were also supplemented annually with a general account of the preceding year, published on the Thursday before Christmas. Between 1603 and 1752, almost 8,000 different weekly bills were published, chronicling plague and general mortality through the city of London. Using the DataScribe module for Omeka S, the Death by Numbers project aims to transcribe and publish the information in these bills in a dataset suitable for computational analysis. We then use the Bills of Mortality to investigate how lived experiences of plague outbreaks intersected with an emerging quantitative mentality among the people of early modern England. In particular, we examine how ordinary people aggregated, transformed, and interpreted death counts in order to draw conclusions about changes in the early modern use of and trust in numbers over time. In doing so, we are investigating contemporary perceptions of numbers and historicizes a quantitative method of knowledge generation that has become central to twenty-first-century understandings of the world." Eligible faculty may earn Professional Development Network (PDN) credit by enrolling in the Canvas course linked here.

Teaching roundtable
3:30-5:00 pm (open to all)
This roundtable will explore the ways that courses on the Human Dimensions of Infectious Disease connect general education concepts in the natural sciences, humanities, quantitative and computational thinking, and ethics. The roundtable will be open to all, with an intended audience of faculty, of all ranks, as well as graduate teaching assistants across programs. The roundtable will discuss challenges and opportunities associated with an integrated approach to pedagogy and provide examples of assignments and activities to promote active learning. Eligible faculty may earn Professional Development Network (PDN) credit by enrolling in the Canvas course linked here.

Presenters:
Cori Rukhtanonchai, Population Health Sciences, Virginia Tech   (website)
Cora Olson, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, Virginia Tech  (website)
Jessica Otis, Department of History and Art History,  George Mason University (website)
Nick Rukhtanonchai, Population Health Sciences, Virginia Tech  (website)
Tom Ewing, Department of History, Virginia Tech (website)

Sponsors: College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences Diversity Grant (link), Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (link), and the Diverse Voices and Perspectives Lecture series (link)

Contact: Tom Ewing (etewing@vt.edu)

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, please contact Amanda Pester (apester@vt.edu) at least 10 business days prior to the event.

Fall 2023 Research Colloquium on Epidemic Orientalism (link)

Image: Nine images of the plague in London, 17th century Wellcome