About

Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic was an ERC-funded project based at CRASSH, University of Cambridge, and The University of St Andrews, running from 2013 until 2018.

Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic is an interdisciplinary research project led by social anthropologist, Dr Christos Lynteris. The project is funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant (under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564). The HI of the project between October 2013 and September 2017 was CRASSH (University of Cambridge). As of October 2017 the project’s HI is the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, with CRASSH remaining a co-beneficiary until the project ends in September 2018.

The project will collect and analyse photographs as well as other visual documents of the third plague pandemic, which broke out in 1855 in Southwest China (Yunnan) and raged across the globe until 1959, causing the death of approximately 12 million people.

As Yersinia pestis spread from country to country and from continent to continent, it left behind it not only a trail of death and terror, but also a growing visual archive on the first global pandemic to be captured by the photographic lens. Rather however than forming a homogeneous or linear visual narrative, these photographic documents provided diverging perspectives on the pandemic, which, more often than not, were not simply different from region to region, but in fact conflicting within any single locus of infection.

The project’s hypothesis is that its visual representation played a pivotal role in the formation of both scientific understandings and public perception of infectious disease epidemics in the modern era.

While investigating the visual record of the third plague pandemic in East Asia, South Asia, Africa and the Americas, researchers will engage in a collaborative and interdisciplinary analysis of the entangled history of the visual representation of the pandemic, taking as a common analytical ground four different but vitally interlinked aspects of the visual representation of the pandemic:

  • The Built Environment
  • Civil Disturbance and Public Order
  • Death, Corpses and Burial
  • Race, Class and Discrimination
You can view the Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic Photographic Database online and open access now: it is hosted by the Cambridge University Library Repository.
www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/275905

You can also visit the Visual Plague project blog for updates and news about the team’s activities.


ERC logo and EU flag‘Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic’ was funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant (under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no. 336564).

People

Principle Investigator

Dr Christos Lynteris, Senior Lecturer, Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews

CRASSH Post-Doctoral Research Associates

Dr des. Lukas Engelmann (2014 – 2017)
Dr Nicholas Evans (2014 – 2017)
Dr Branwyn Poleykett (2014 – 2018)

St Andrews’ Post-Doctoral Research Associates

Dr Maurits Meerwijk (2018)
Dr Abhijit Sarkar (2018)

Research Project Administrators

CRASSH Samantha Peel
St Andrews Teresa Abaurrea

Advisory Board

Advisory Board

Sam Barzilay, Creative Director, United Photo Industries/Photoville Festival, New York, USA

John Henderson, Professor of Italian Renaissance History, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London; Fellow, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge

Frédéric Keck, Director of the Department of Research and Education, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; Chargé de Recherche, CNRS/ EHESS, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale.

David Napier, Professor of Medical Anthropology, Department of Social Anthropology, University College London, University of London

Events

Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic
Secrets and Lies
6 Feb 2014 4:00pm - 6:00pm, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT

A photography exhibition and wine reception at the Alison Richard Building.

Managing project data: a workshop
30 Oct 2014 1:00pm - 2:00pm, CRASSH Meeting Room, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT

An informal workshop to explore the issues, pitfalls, best practice and the solutions to managing data and working collaboratively.

Plague and the City: Disease, Epidemic Control and the Urban Environment
5 Dec 2014 - 6 Dec 2014 All day, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT

This is the first annual conference of the ERC-funded project 'Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic'. It will bring together social scientists, historians, historical geographers, urbanists and epidemiologists to discuss and disentangle the interrelation between bubonic plague (Yersinia pestis) and the urban environment in both historical and contemporary contexts.

Anthropology of Zoonoses
26 Feb 2015 - 27 Feb 2015 All day, Collège de France, salle Claude Lévi-Strauss, 52 rue Cardinal Lemoine, 75005 Paris

Zoonoses raise a growing challenge to the life sciences as they force to understand the mechanisms of transmission of pathogens that cross species barriers. The aim of this conference is to explore how anthropology may relate to this challenge. In collaboration with College de France, Paris, and funded by by the Axa Research Fund.

From Response to Recovery and Beyond
28 May 2015 5:00pm - 6:30pm, SG1/2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge
Corpses, Burials and Infection
4 Dec 2015 - 5 Dec 2015 All day, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge

This is the second annual conference of the ERC-funded project 'Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic'.

Techniques, Technologies and Materialities of Epidemic Control
16 Sep 2016 - 17 Sep 2016 All day, SG1/2, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT

The Third Annual conference of the ERC project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic.

Photography, Alterity and Epidemics
11 May 2017 - 30 Jun 2017 5:30pm, Royal Anthropological Institute
Assembling Epidemics: Disease, Ecology and the (Un)natural
8 Sep 2017 - 9 Sep 2017 All day, SG1/2, CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DT
Visions of plague: photographs of the third plague pandemic
15 Feb 2018 17:00 - 19:00, Alison Richard Building
Visual Plague: Image, Imagination & Imaginary
12 Jul 2018 - 14 Jul 2018 All day, Lawrence Levy Studio, The Byre Theatre, University of St Andrews

The Database

You can view the Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic Photographic Database online and open access now: it is hosted by the Cambridge University Library Repository.

The Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic Photographic Database provides scholars and the general public with a unique visual resource of one of the most important infectious disease pandemics in modern times. Offering rich information on colonial governance, architectural and urban planning intervention, global trade, medical practice and scientific research across the globe, it reveals neglected yet vital aspects of social, economic and political life at the turn of the nineteenth century. Social scientists and historians will be able to access unique new data on the historical development of plague outbreaks and their social and political impacts, as well as on medical, governmental and popular responses to them. Life and medical scientists will be given access to data for historical epidemiological investigations, and for the understanding of the disease ecology of plague. The general public will be able to access for the first time the visual record of a pandemic that changed the course of modern medicine, but which is also generally forgotten today.

You can find more information through the CRASSH blog, where the database launch was announced.

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN THE ARTS, SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Tel: +44 1223 766886
Email enquiries@crassh.cam.ac.uk