The Epidemiological Revolution

Project Information

TER

Grant agreement ID: 947872

DOI

10.3030/947872

EC signature date 3 December 2020

Start date 1 January 2021

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 484 115,00

EU contribution

€ 1 484 115,00

Coordinated by

THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - TER (The Epidemiological Revolution)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The Epidemiological Revolution (TER) traces the historical rise of epidemiological reasoning through the long twentieth century. The project’s aim is to understand how this novel data science transformed conceptions of health and disease in science and society and to trace how epidemiological knowledge has become authoritative in many aspects of medical and public health decision making. To this end, the project maps the conditions under which epidemiology became an authoritative science and reconstruct how ‘the epidemic’ has assumed scientific and political urgency since 1900. This seismic epistemological shift resulted in new eminence for epidemiological modelling, a radical expansion of what counts as epidemiological data, and innovative applications for thinking about ‘epidemic’ phenomena far beyond traditional accounts of infectious disease. It is crucial for society to comprehend the growing influence and the sweeping authority that epidemiological perspectives have become endowed with, to better understand how specific ideas of evidence and scientific inference have come to inform health policy.

TER achieves these aims through the analysis of three discrete modes of epidemiological reasoning:

1. Modelling, and the invention of the epidemiological graph
2. Correlation, and the making of epidemiological data
3. Configuration, and the social formation of epidemiology

Mapping these modes of reasoning, TER creates an ambitious digital collection of new empirical data and a comprehensive interactive record of the epidemiological revolution. TER, for the first time, delivers a historical epistemology which examines the shifting contours of ‘epidemics’ as epistemic objects, as well as of epidemiology as a distinct system of thought in the long twentieth century. This project takes a ground-breaking approach to the historiography of data-science, combining high-impact case studies with digital research tools to explore the political, ethical and social challenges of this seismic shift.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over 54 months, the project has established and critically expanded a new historiography of epidemiological reasoning. Through 15 peer-reviewed publications, 4 workshops, and over 50 conference presentations, a dedicated social media campaign with over 1800 followers, a successful newsletter with over 450 subscribers and a popular website, the projects perspectives and interventions have reached a significant professional audience.

In the same period, the PI has concluded and published six peer-review articles dedicated to the project’s aims and goals while editing four thematically focused special issues, of which three are now published and one is forthcoming. The project has held four workshops, starting with an extraordinary online event to reflect on consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on the field of epidemiology in June 2021. The project also held a planned workshop for WP1 in June 2022 to explore the history of epidemiological modelling under the title Contagion & Calculus, and two further workshops considering the convergence of data and disease in history for WP2 in June and December 2023. The team has edited an ambitious new handbook for the history of modern epidemiology with over 40 contributions of world-leading scholars in the field, which is now accepted for publication in early 2026.

While archival research was severely constrained by the pandemic until the beginning of 2022, research activities have resumed in line with initial assumptions across all three WPs. With a successful re-appointment on WP3,two new case studies are under way supported by archival research and oral history interviews. Additionally, the PI has shifted focus to working with a series of digital resources to develop and structure digital tools and to engage with the bibliometric history of epidemiology. This work has led to the development of a dashboard visualising the historical distribution of scholarship on “social contagion”, which has been developed into a proof of concept and will be published towards the final phase of the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In its first 54 months, the project has both shown the limitations of current historiography and developed pathways of how to expand beyond the state of the art in the field. The project has pioneered a new research framework to bring the history of epidemiology to bear on its present practices and research directions. Challenging the often-simplified narrative of the field’s origins produced a history deeply embedded in colonialism and structured by the invention of novel forms of scientific evidence. First with the workshop on the effects of Covid-19 on epidemiology, as well as with the workshop on epidemiological modelling and on data structures and practices, the project has introduced new perspectives and methodological approaches far exceeding expectations. More importantly, the events, the development of a handbook with over 40 contributors have also facilitated the formation of a new international research community concerned with the modern history of epidemiology from a variety of disciplinary and regional perspectives. Over the coming years and until the end of the project, a series of well-evidenced case studies on population biology, the demographic health service and on the intersections of genetics and epidemiology as well as a final workshop on population genetics will further elevate the history of epidemiological reasoning.

Map of a plague 'of houses and families' in 1878-79 Vetlianka, by G.N. Minkh

Figure 1: Screenshot of the website