SG - What’s Next? Science and Politics in an Age of Crises

About What’s Next? Science and Politics in an Age of Crises

A health crisis is never solely a health crisis. As the recent pandemic has demonstrated, the practice is always unruly. So, how to speak out in public as a scientist, start a fruitful conversation, and move to action in times of uncertainty? Is science truly the solution to everything, or does the everyday world tell us something different? And what is needed to work better together?

After sketching the scene, Amrish will join in an exchange of thoughts with virologist Wim van der Poel, philosopher Julia Rijssenbeek, and the audience.

About series ‘Zoonoses As Political Actors’

In a mere matter of months a zoonotic disease thoroughly disrupted the world as we knew it, thus forcing us to rethink the ways in which we live our lives. Starting from the shared COVID-19 experience, we explore what world we came to inhabit and what a world to come may hold. Can we prevent future pandemics, or has the human species lost control over the (natural) world? What world do you want to live in? And how do we get there?

About Amrish Baidjoe

Amrish Baidjoe is a field epidemiologist and microbiologist who is specialised in humanitarian health emergencies. He worked on Ebola outbreaks, the Zika epidemic, and led WHO research on the Rohingya Refugee crisis in Bangladesh. Amrish was also a member of the Red Team, an independent COVID-19 advice team, and worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the director of the Operational Research unit (LuxOR) of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) he efforts to build better bridges between operational humanitarian organisations and academia. Amrish is also a Honorary Assistent Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at the department of infectious disease epidemiology.