DV473      Half Unit
Health, conflict and crises

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course adopts a multidisciplinary approach (IR, Political economy, global health, anthropology, health systems) to the study of health and crises, in particular conflict, pandemics, and environmental disasters. The course examines the politics and experiences of crisis and their humanitarian health responses and considers the ways in which conflict and disasters impact population health, health systems, medical research, as well as national and international and politics. The course considers the politics of medical and pharmaceutical research in contexts of crisis and looks at the politics of risk in healthcare. The aim is to draw parallels and lessons learned on crises and how they affect systems and decision making. 

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

The teaching will rotate among the 3 core teachers and each set of two lectures will have an extended 2 hours seminar where discussion will be complemented by group work set up in advance.

Proposal

Students will be expected to produce a project proposal and key questions for the summative assessment (two pages maximum) in the WT.

• Hutchinson E, Kovats S, eds. (2016) Environment, Health and Sustainable Development. Second edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
• Walt G, Shiffman J, Schneider H, Murray S, Brugha R, Franco M, Bilal U, Diez-Roux AV. (2015) Preventing non-communicable diseases through structural changes in urban environments. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 69(6): 509. 6.
• Abramowitz, S., & Panter-Brick, C. (2015). Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice. University of Pennsylvania Press.
• Benton, A., & Atshan, S. E. (2016). “Even War has Rules”: On Medical Neutrality and Legitimate Non-violence. Culture, medicine, and psychiatry, 40(2), 151-158.
• Caduff, C. (2015) The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events in a Public Culture of Danger. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
• Kelly, A.H. (2018) ‘Ebola Vaccines, Evidentiary Charisma and the Rise of Global Health Emergency Research’, Economy and Society, 47(1), 135–61
• Redfield, P. 2013. Life in Crisis: the ethical journey of doctors without borders. London: UCP.
• Magone, C., Neuman, M., & Weissman, F. (Eds.). (2012). Humanitarian negotiations revealed: the MSF experience. Oxford University Press.
• Vigh, Henrik. (2008) "Crisis and chronicity: Anthropological perspectives on continuous conflict and decline." Ethnos, 73(1), 5-24.
• James, M. V., & Lees, S. S. (2022). “Are you sure it’s not the Corona vaccine?” An Ebola vaccine trial during COVID-19 in DRC. Medical anthropology, 41(5), 503-517.

Project (100%) in Spring Term Week 1

Summative assignment to be a maximum of 8 A4 pages.