HIS42820 One World, One Health?

Academic Year 2022/2023

The past hundred years have seen a profound shift in the way we conceive of our interrelations and -dependencies with other human and non-human organisms like microbes and animals. In contrast to older notions of human mastery over ‘nature’ or romantic tropes of the ‘wilderness’, a growing number of thinkers, activists, and institutions became preoccupied with notions of planetary interconnectedness. Rather than standing outside of ‘nature’, humans were conceived of as being embedded in multiple and often fragile ecological systems that were ultimately planetary in scale. By the new millennium, this concept of ecological interconnectedness across the human, animal, and environmental domains had become formalised as One World, One Health and was regularly mobilised to call for interdisciplinary approaches in science and collective global action in health, food, and environmental politics.

One World, One Health reconstructs the rise of planetary and ecological thinking in science, culture, and politics from around 1900 to the 21st century. Students will engage with primary and secondary literature from across the humanities, social sciences, and biomedical sciences. They will trace how international disease outbreaks, colonial research, the mass introduction of new biochemical substances like antibiotics or DDT, and emerging concepts of biological interrelatedness influenced international decision-making. By looking at what is included and excluded in the resulting era of One World, One Health politics, they will also uncover the deep-rooted inequalities, biases, and (post)colonial power dynamics that remain embedded in current planetary rhetoric and global politics.

At the end of the module, students will have gained a detailed overview of the evolution of (post-)colonial, international, and Global Health politics since 1900, the influence of ecological thinking and new forms of neoliberal economics on international decision-making, and the persistence of racial, gender, political, and economic inequalities across disease and environmental policy.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of the module, students will have learnt about:
- The origins of contemporary One Health and Global Health in international health and tropical medicine.
- The interconnected nature of animal, human, and environmental health.
- Different biomedical and social sciences approaches to studying health risks.
- The importance of path dependencies, surveillance blind spots, and racial, economic, and gender injustice in shaping exposure and reactions to a variety of environmental and health risks.
- Ongoing (post)colonial trajectories in Global Health.

Indicative Module Content:

Week 1. Human and environmental health: tropical climates, frail constitutions, and the pre-history of One Health.
Week 2. How epidemics became complex: virulence, epidemiology, and the post-war crisis of classic bacteriology.
Week 3. From colonialism to internationalism– interwar health and the roots of institutionalised links between human and animal health.
Week 4. From industrial to environmental health – toxicity, statistics, and environmentalism in the post-war period.
Week 5. Silence, Miss Carson! – activism, biases, and science during an age of ecological and welfare protest.
Week 6. Eradication and exasperation – the varying fates of smallpox, malaria, and rinderpest eradication.
Week 7. Pyrrhic Progress – antibiotics, resistance, and Cold War visions of plenty.
Week 8. Reading Week
Week 9. Reading Week
Week 10. (Re-)emergence – HIV/AIDS, AMR, and the return of infectious disease concerns.
Week 11. Efficiency in a world of risk–uncertainty, neoliberalism, and resource constraints in environmental and health politics.
Week 12. Preparedness and its oversights – the origins of contemporary biosecurity, surveillance, and modelling.
Week 13. One Health, One World? The rise of One Health in an age of Global Health

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Seminar (or Webinar)

22
Specified Learning Activities

95
Autonomous Student Learning

95
Total

212
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
This module combines large-group and small-group teaching. Weekly seminars provide overviews of weekly topics, with focus
upon key historical trends, debates and events. The learning approach of these seminar is bottom-up, active, and task-based. Students are expected to read the essential reading alongside precirculated primary sources including texts, images, and movies. Each week one or two students present a poster on a topic related to the weekly theme following constructive positive peer review by the group in light of the precirculated literature. This activity builds important analytical, communication, and reflective skills. Key research, writing and citation skills are incorporated into seminar work and are assessed and advanced from the formative to the summative final essay. 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Essay: One end of term essay (5,000 words including footnotes) Week 12 n/a Graded No

40
Continuous Assessment: In-class assessment of participation and preparation Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

20
Presentation: One mid-term poster (1,000 words including footnotes) Unspecified n/a Graded No

40

Carry forward of passed components
No
 
Resit In Terminal Exam
Autumn No
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment
• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Online automated feedback
• Peer review activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Feedback on the poster presentation and in-class presentation will be given individually during office hours. Feedback on the end-of-semester Research Project / Paper Assignment will be given by appointment in one-to-one meetings. Following a poster presentation, the wider seminar group will also engage in constructive postive peer review of the presentation in light of the precirculated literature, sources, and current issues.