Trent University’s “Anthropology Goes Downtown” Lecture Series Wraps Up March 3 at Splice

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Community Invited to Free Presentation Examining the Biosocial Processes of Pandemics

Friday, February 29, 2008, Peterborough

The final presentation in the 2008 Kenneth Kidd Lecture Series entitled “Anthropology Goes Downtown” hosted by Trent University’s Anthropology Department will be held on Monday, March 3 at Splice Restaurant beginning at 8:00 p.m.

The last presentation will feature Professor Ann Herring from the department of anthropology at McMaster University. Her talk is entitled “Viral Panic, Vulnerability and the Next Pandemic” which explores how the worries in the west about avian influenza – and an impending pandemic – have been linked to the 1918 flu (perhaps inappropriately). A reception with Prof. Herring will follow.

Prof. Herring’s primary research interests centre on the anthropology of infectious disease. This involves studying the evolution of pathogens, the biosocial circumstances that give rise to epidemics and facilitate their spread from place to place, as well as the biosocial processes that ensue from the disease experience. She is interested in the way populations and societies – past and present – are transformed by epidemics and in the ways in which patterns of health and disease change through time. Her work straddles the anthropology of health, human biology, ethnohistory and the anthropology of death.

The lecture series is named for the late Kenneth E. Kidd, first chair of Trent's Anthropology Department. Lectures in this series are given by visiting guests, Trent faculty and Research Fellows, and graduate students in Anthropology. All members of Trent and the Peterborough community are most welcome and encourage to attend this free event.

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For further information, please contact Professor Julia Harrison, chair of anthropology, at (705) 748-1011, ext. 7772.