Prevention and management of infectious diseases remains one of this century’s biggest challenges. As drugs and vaccinations have proliferated, protection from disease has increasingly been seen as an individual problem, requiring individual action. But due to the evolution of anti-microbial resistance, vaccine refusal and rapid disease transmission through global trade and travel, the impact of the drugs and vaccines that we have come to take for granted is undermined.
This lecture will explore the importance of understanding the ‘Human Factor’ in disease management, looking at the effects of policy on individual and group behaviour and at the role psychology plays in developing a new understanding of collective moral responsibility for infectious disease. The lecture is an introduction to the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease, an interdisciplinary team from zoology, history, philosophy, psychology and medicine.
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Unfortunately this lecture will now not be filmed or live webcast but it will be recorded for podcast.
About the speakers
Professor Mark Harrison is Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease; the Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine and Professor of the History of Medicine.
Mark has published widely on the history of disease and medicine, especially in relation to the history of war, imperialism, and globalisation. His most recent book Contagion (Yale University Press, 2012) examines the history of infectious disease and international trade from the Black Death to the present day.
As well as being Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease, Mark is involved in the following research projects:
- From Sail to Steam: Health, Medicine, and the Victorian Navy (Wellcome Trust Project Grant)
- The Challenge of Urbanization: Health and the Global City ((Wellcome Trust ISSF/John Fell Fund Award)
- Invisible Crises, Neglected Histories: Malaria in Asia c.1900-present (Wellcome Trust Investigator Award)
Hannah Maslen is Programme Manager on the Oxford Martin Programme on Collective Responsibility for Infectious Disease, James Martin Fellow on the Oxford Martin Programme on Mind and Machine, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Ethics at the University of Oxford.
Hannah’s academic background is in philosophy, psychology and law: she received her BA in PPP from Oxford in 2007, her MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Oxford in 2008, and her DPhil from Oxford in 2011.
Her current research focuses on the ethical, legal and social implications of various brain intervention technologies, but she works on a variety of topics within applied philosophy and ethics, spanning neuroethics, medical ethics, moral emotions, philosophy of punishment and criminal justice.
Previously, Hannah worked on the NWO-funded project ‘Enhancing Responsibility: the Effects of Cognitive Enhancement on Moral and Legal Responsibility’. She also continues to write on topics in sentencing and penal theory and has recently had her book on remorse and retribution published (Hart Publishing).
Her current research position is associated with the Oxford Martin School’s Progamme on Mind and Machine, and the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. The aim of this project is to examine various brain intervention and interface technologies, from brain stimulation devices, to optogenetics, to virtual reality and immersive technologies. her research examines the ethical, legal and social implications of these technologies.