Tamara Giles-Vernick
Biographic Data
| ID | 84829 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tamara Giles-Vernick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tamara |
| FAMILY NAME | Giles-Vernick |
| SIGNATURE | GILES-VERNICK T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institut Pasteur |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2873-8544 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Epistemic preparedness
Preparedness strategies for emergent infectious diseases have focused on microbial surveillance, medical stockpiling and healthcare infrastructure resilience. But what does it mean to be epistemically or cognitively prepared for the next disease outbreak? Taking stock of lessons for data practices and statistical modelling in the wake of COVID-19, we propose a reconceptualising of preparedness in global health, focusing on ecological and sociolog…
Using Qualitative Research in Community Engagement to Capture and Mitigate Vulnerability Mechanisms in the Face of Infectious Diseases: Insights From a Research-Based Program in Five European Countrie…
Various frameworks have been proposed for carrying out community engagement (CE) in the context of infectious disease response, but few have done so through a lens of vulnerability and even fewer, if any, have compared cases across countries. This paper reflects on the implementation of a project based on social science research and CE to capture and mitigate vulnerability mechanisms, which was carried out in France, Germany, Italy, Malta, and Sl…
Motivation to continue and the value of care work among French Red Cross volunteers and workers during the Covid-19 pandemic: A mixed methods study
Although anxious state and risk perceptions influenced FRC actor motivation to continue during the COVID-19 pandemic, this motivation to continue must be understood in a context of changing values of voluntary and salaried care work that sustain the health and wellbeing of a population. Studies of future health emergencies could extend this reasearch to yield greater insight into sociocultural and political economic logics that sustain care work
Reframing vulnerable ‘groups’: A qualitative analysis of cross-cutting precarity during France’s Covid-19 response
France implemented wide-ranging responses to control SARS-CoV2 transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some measures targeted specific social groups considered to be ‘vulnerable’. Yet how diverse populations experienced and shared existing vulnerabilities within these public health responses remains poorly understood. Theoretical grounding of the present analysis relies on Florencia Luna"s ‘layers’ of vulnerability and David Napier and Anna Vo…
A time of decline: An eco-anthropological and ethnohistorical investigation of mpox in the Central African Republic
The Central African Republic (CAR) has experienced repeated mpox outbreaks since 2001. Although several mpox epidemiological risk factors for zoonotic and interhuman transmission have been documented, the reasons for more frequent epidemic outbreaks are less well understood, relying on vague explanatory categories, including deforestation, hunting, and civil unrest. To gain insight into increasingly frequent outbreaks, we undertook an ethnohistor…
Future coexistence with great apes will require major changes to policy and practice
Embracing context: Lessons from designing a dialogue-based intervention to address vaccine hesitancy
Dialogue with people who are vaccine hesitant has been recommended as a method to increase vaccination uptake. The process of cultivating dialogue is shaped by the context in which it occurs, yet the development of interventions addressing vaccine hesitancy with dialogue often overlooks the role of context and favors relatively fixed solutions. This reflexive paper shares three key lessons related to context for dialogue-based interventions. Thes…
A rapid qualitative methods assessment and reporting tool for epidemic response as the outcome of a rapid review and expert consultation
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Methods Sub-Group of the WHO COVID-19 Social Science Research Roadmap Working Group conducted a rapid evidence review of rapid qualitative methods (RQMs) used during epidemics. The rapid review objectives were to (1) synthesize the development, implementation, and uses of RQMs, including the data collection tools, research questions, research capacities, analytical approaches, and strategies use…
Community engagement to tackle infectious threats: A viewpoint based on a social science mapping process in Bangladesh, Uganda, and Ukraine
The SoNAR-Global Social Science Network for Infectious Threats and Antimicrobial Resistance [1] connects social scientists from Europe, South East Asia, and West and Central Africa in their interest in epidemics and infectious diseases. Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and West Africa and the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the importance [...]
More than one crisis: Covid-19 response actors navigating multi-dimensional crises in Flanders, Belgium
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted societies globally. Public health institutions were tasked with responding to the pandemic in a dynamic and uncertain context. This paper sheds light on the experiences of COVID-19 response actors as they navigated multi-dimensional crises associated with the pandemic in general and vaccine hesitancy in particular. This research was conducted during the initial phase of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in Flanders,…
Drawing a pandemic vulnerabilities' map: The SoNAR-global Vulnerabilities Assessment digital and its output
This paper describes the process, advantages and limitations of a qualitative methodology for defining and analyzing vulnerabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Implemented in Italy in two sites (Rome and outside Rome, in some small-medium sized municipalities in Latium) in 2021, this investigation employed a mixed digital research tool that was also used simultaneously in four other European countries. Its digital nature encompasses both proce…
Postscript: A pandemic read on African health and environmental histories
Addressing vulnerabilities in communities facing infectious disease threats: A need for social science-driven assessments
Key points\n- Infectious threats, including pandemics, require a careful understanding of local contexts and global processes. Here, the social sciences can offer important contributions.\n- Responses to infectious diseases should use community engagement that addresses wide-ranging vulnerabilities, using concepts and methods from both social science and traditional infectious disease science
A review and agenda for integrated disease models including social and behavioural factors
Factors Associated with Stunted Growth in Children Under Five Years in Antananarivo, Madagascar and Bangui, Central African Republic
Our results suggest maternal education, antenatal care, iron supplementation and simple WASH interventions such as using soap and infection control as general and breastfeeding (Antananarivo) or better nutrition (Bangui) as area-specified interventions
Community engagement and vulnerability in infectious diseases: A systematic review and qualitative analysis of the literature
Local primatologies in central Africa
À partir d'analyses anthropologiques et historiques des « primatologies locales » en Afrique centrale, cette contribution montre qu'elles permettent de mettre en lumière les savoirs accumulés et en mutation sur l'alimentation, l'écologie et le comportement des primates non-humains, et elles peuvent également servir de cadre pour comprendre ce que cela signifie de dire que les primates non-humains sont « presque comme les humains ». Le terme « pri…
Imagining viral hepatitis in Burkina Faso
This article explores 'imaginings' around hepatitis B in Burkina Faso and their historical genealogies. Hepatitis B is a viral infection afflicting the liver, but asymptomatic carriers may fall ill decades after exposure to the virus. Drawing from ethnographic interviews, we analyse how people living with hepatitis B in Burkina Faso grapple with incertitude about the course of their infections, the possibilities for healing and their illness's in…
Rethinking Human–Nonhuman Primate Contact and Pathogenic Disease Spillover
Beyond the Cut Hunter: A Historical Epidemiology of HIV Beginnings in Central Africa
Home Care of Children With Diarrhea in Bangui's Therapeutic Landscape (Central African Republic)
We explore how the therapeutic landscape of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, shaped and reflected caregivers' home care of childhood diarrhea. Using interviews, group discussions, and participant observation, we found that caregivers described several categories of diarrhea, but in practice, adopted an experimental approach to home diarrheal care. Many managed incertitude by initially dosing children with street medicines and herb…
Incertitude, Hepatitis B, and Infant Vaccination in West and Central Africa
This comparative study explores incertitude about hepatitis B (HBV) and its implications for childhood vaccination in Bangui, Central African Republic, and the Cascades region, Burkina Faso. Anthropological approaches to vaccination, which counter stereotypes of "ignorant" publics needing education to accept vaccination, excavate alternative ways of knowing about illness and vaccination. We build on these approaches, evaluating different kinds of…
The puzzle of Buruli ulcer transmission, ethno-ecological history and the end of "love" in the Akonolinga district, Cameroon
Social History, Biology, and the Emergence of Hiv in Colonial Africa
This essay considers how historians of Africa can draw from and critically contribute to biomedical debates. Recent virological research has established that the HIV/AIDS pandemic began with the passage of simian immunodeficiency viruses into human populations in the first half of the twentieth century. Current debates on the emergence of HIV are an opportunity for historians to engage with biomedical research to rethink social, political, and en…
"Death does not come from the forest but from the village". People, great apes, and disease in the Equatorial African rain forest
Depuis longtemps les anthropologues se sont interrogés sur la perméabilité des distinctions entre grands singes et hommes et sur l'emboîtement de leurs histoires biologiques. Cette analyse aborde une question liée, qui est dominée largement par les virologues, les épidémiologistes, et les primatologues, mais souvent négligée par les anthropologues : les histoires des échanges pathogéniques qui brouillent les frontières entre les êtres humains et …
Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rain Forest
Visions of Apes, Reflections on Change: Telling Tales of Great Apes in Equatorial Africa
This article explores stories that some central Africans in the middle Sangha River basin and in northern Gabon have told about gorillas and chimpanzees. Such tales have provided opportunities for Africans to debate the consequences of their engagements with outside people, resources, and processes. But their meanings have proliferated in different social, cultural, and historical contexts. Central Africans have used such stories to make claims a…
Na lege ti guiriri (On the Road of History): Mapping out the past and Present in M'Bres Region, Central African Republic
L'A. explore les images et expressions spatio-temporelles dans l'historiographie banda et expliquent que les historiens examinent ces caracteristiques dans des recits historiques. L'histoire (« guiriri ») banda a accumule de nombreuses significations comme l'espace du passe, comme la connaissance des evenements, des personnes et des pratiques passes, et comme une representation d'un ordre social idealise. Les conteurs d'histoire ont utilise des i…
Social History, Biology, and the Emergence of Hiv in Colonial Africa
This essay considers how historians of Africa can draw from and critically contribute to biomedical debates. Recent virological research has established that the HIV/AIDS pandemic began with the passage of simian immunodeficiency viruses into human populations in the first half of the twentieth century. Current debates on the emergence of HIV are an opportunity for historians to engage with biomedical research to rethink social, political, and en…
Social Construction of the past: Representation as Power
Part I The Representation of Ethnicity 1. Ethnicity and Representation Leith Mullings 2. Racial Representations, Power and Dependent Development in the United States South Pem Buck 3. Sexual Politics and the Mediation of Class, Gender and Race in Former Slave Plantation Societies: the case of Haiti Carolle Charles 4. Representation and Power: Blacks in Colombia Peter Wade 5. From Eden to Limbo: the construction of indigenism in Brazil Alcida Ramo…
Incertitude, Hepatitis B, and Infant Vaccination in West and Central Africa
This comparative study explores incertitude about hepatitis B (HBV) and its implications for childhood vaccination in Bangui, Central African Republic, and the Cascades region, Burkina Faso. Anthropological approaches to vaccination, which counter stereotypes of "ignorant" publics needing education to accept vaccination, excavate alternative ways of knowing about illness and vaccination. We build on these approaches, evaluating different kinds of…
Doli: Translating an African Environmental History of Loss in the Sangha River Basin of Equatorial Africa
This essay is about a conceptual category of historical and environmental knowledge and about how a particular group of Africans use that category to understand and debate change. It is, in effect, an exercise in translation. In the middle and upper Sangha basin forests of the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) and Cameroon, Mpiemu speakers have articulated a broad category, doli , through which they express, debate and make claims of truth about …
The puzzle of Buruli ulcer transmission, ethno-ecological history and the end of "love" in the Akonolinga district, Cameroon
Malaria, environmental change, and a historical epidemiology of childhood ‘cold fevers’: Popular interpretations from southwestern Burkina Faso
We Wander Like Birds: Migration, Indigeneity, and the Fabrication of Frontiers in the Sangha River Basin of Equatorial Africa
Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa
Future coexistence with great apes will require major changes to policy and practice
Postscript: A pandemic read on African health and environmental histories
Imagining viral hepatitis in Burkina Faso
This article explores 'imaginings' around hepatitis B in Burkina Faso and their historical genealogies. Hepatitis B is a viral infection afflicting the liver, but asymptomatic carriers may fall ill decades after exposure to the virus. Drawing from ethnographic interviews, we analyse how people living with hepatitis B in Burkina Faso grapple with incertitude about the course of their infections, the possibilities for healing and their illness's in…
Na lege ti guiriri (On the Road of History): Mapping out the past and Present in M'Bres Region, Central African Republic
L'A. explore les images et expressions spatio-temporelles dans l'historiographie banda et expliquent que les historiens examinent ces caracteristiques dans des recits historiques. L'histoire (« guiriri ») banda a accumule de nombreuses significations comme l'espace du passe, comme la connaissance des evenements, des personnes et des pratiques passes, et comme une representation d'un ordre social idealise. Les conteurs d'histoire ont utilise des i…
Colonialism, Health and Illness in French Equatorial Africa, 1885-1935
Social Construction of the past: Representation as Power
Part I The Representation of Ethnicity 1. Ethnicity and Representation Leith Mullings 2. Racial Representations, Power and Dependent Development in the United States South Pem Buck 3. Sexual Politics and the Mediation of Class, Gender and Race in Former Slave Plantation Societies: the case of Haiti Carolle Charles 4. Representation and Power: Blacks in Colombia Peter Wade 5. From Eden to Limbo: the construction of indigenism in Brazil Alcida Ramo…
We Wander Like Birds: Migration, Indigeneity, and the Fabrication of Frontiers in the Sangha River Basin of Equatorial Africa
Leaving a Person behind: History, Personhood, and Struggles over Forest Resources in the Sangha Basin of Equatorial Africa
Tamara Giles-Vernick, Leaving a Person behind: History, Personhood, and Struggles over Forest Resources in the Sangha Basin of Equatorial Africa, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2/3 (1999), pp. 311-338
Doli: Translating an African Environmental History of Loss in the Sangha River Basin of Equatorial Africa
This essay is about a conceptual category of historical and environmental knowledge and about how a particular group of Africans use that category to understand and debate change. It is, in effect, an exercise in translation. In the middle and upper Sangha basin forests of the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) and Cameroon, Mpiemu speakers have articulated a broad category, doli , through which they express, debate and make claims of truth about …
Workers, Football Players, Musicians, and Painters: Remarking Conventional Narratives of Africa's Colonial Past
Research Article| May 01 2000 Workers, Football Players, Musicians, and Painters: Remarking Conventional Narratives of Africa's Colonial Past Tamara Giles-Vernick Tamara Giles-Vernick Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (2000) 2000 (77): 135–141. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2000-77-135 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Tamara Giles-Vernick; Workers, Football…
African Philosophy as Cultural Inquiry
A. Masolo Part 1: Power, Personhood, and Agency Introduction to Part 1 Ivan Karp and D. A. Masolo 1. Tok Af, Lef Af: A Political Economy of Temne Techniques of Secrecy and Self Rosalind Shaw 2. Islam Among the Humours: Destiny and Agency Among the Swahili David Parkin 3. Some African Conceptions of Person: A Critique Didier N. Kaphagawani Part 2: Knowledge and Discourse Introduction to Part 2 Ivan Karp and D. A. Masolo 4. The Play of Deconstructi…
Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa
Conversations in the Rainforest: Culture, Values, and the Environment in Central Africa
farmers and foragers of the Ubangi and the Ituri who shared with me their lives, their knowledge, and their friendship
The End of Empire in French West Africa: France's Successful Decolonization? (review)
Reviewed by: The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful Decolonization? Tamara Giles-Vernick The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful Decolonization?. By Tony Chafer. Oxford: Berg., 2002. Chafer’s aim in The End of Empire is to debunk some unquestioned myths in France and Africa concerning France’s decolonization in Africa. This process was not, as many have presumed, a smooth one that integrated an independe…
Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rain Forest
What’s Next for Environmental History
Visions of Apes, Reflections on Change: Telling Tales of Great Apes in Equatorial Africa
This article explores stories that some central Africans in the middle Sangha River basin and in northern Gabon have told about gorillas and chimpanzees. Such tales have provided opportunities for Africans to debate the consequences of their engagements with outside people, resources, and processes. But their meanings have proliferated in different social, cultural, and historical contexts. Central Africans have used such stories to make claims a…
Malaria, environmental change, and a historical epidemiology of childhood ‘cold fevers’: Popular interpretations from southwestern Burkina Faso
"Death does not come from the forest but from the village". People, great apes, and disease in the Equatorial African rain forest
Depuis longtemps les anthropologues se sont interrogés sur la perméabilité des distinctions entre grands singes et hommes et sur l'emboîtement de leurs histoires biologiques. Cette analyse aborde une question liée, qui est dominée largement par les virologues, les épidémiologistes, et les primatologues, mais souvent négligée par les anthropologues : les histoires des échanges pathogéniques qui brouillent les frontières entre les êtres humains et …
The Land is Dying: Contingency, Creativity and Conflict in Western Kenya
Paul Wenzel Geissler and Ruth Jane Prince, Epistemologies of Healing, vol. 5, New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2010, xix +423 pp. In this moving and deeply rewarding ethnographic study, Paul We
Social History, Biology, and the Emergence of Hiv in Colonial Africa
This essay considers how historians of Africa can draw from and critically contribute to biomedical debates. Recent virological research has established that the HIV/AIDS pandemic began with the passage of simian immunodeficiency viruses into human populations in the first half of the twentieth century. Current debates on the emergence of HIV are an opportunity for historians to engage with biomedical research to rethink social, political, and en…
The puzzle of Buruli ulcer transmission, ethno-ecological history and the end of "love" in the Akonolinga district, Cameroon
Beyond the Cut Hunter: A Historical Epidemiology of HIV Beginnings in Central Africa
Home Care of Children With Diarrhea in Bangui's Therapeutic Landscape (Central African Republic)
We explore how the therapeutic landscape of Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, shaped and reflected caregivers' home care of childhood diarrhea. Using interviews, group discussions, and participant observation, we found that caregivers described several categories of diarrhea, but in practice, adopted an experimental approach to home diarrheal care. Many managed incertitude by initially dosing children with street medicines and herb…
Incertitude, Hepatitis B, and Infant Vaccination in West and Central Africa
This comparative study explores incertitude about hepatitis B (HBV) and its implications for childhood vaccination in Bangui, Central African Republic, and the Cascades region, Burkina Faso. Anthropological approaches to vaccination, which counter stereotypes of "ignorant" publics needing education to accept vaccination, excavate alternative ways of knowing about illness and vaccination. We build on these approaches, evaluating different kinds of…
Rethinking Human–Nonhuman Primate Contact and Pathogenic Disease Spillover
Local primatologies in central Africa
À partir d'analyses anthropologiques et historiques des « primatologies locales » en Afrique centrale, cette contribution montre qu'elles permettent de mettre en lumière les savoirs accumulés et en mutation sur l'alimentation, l'écologie et le comportement des primates non-humains, et elles peuvent également servir de cadre pour comprendre ce que cela signifie de dire que les primates non-humains sont « presque comme les humains ». Le terme « pri…
Imagining viral hepatitis in Burkina Faso
This article explores 'imaginings' around hepatitis B in Burkina Faso and their historical genealogies. Hepatitis B is a viral infection afflicting the liver, but asymptomatic carriers may fall ill decades after exposure to the virus. Drawing from ethnographic interviews, we analyse how people living with hepatitis B in Burkina Faso grapple with incertitude about the course of their infections, the possibilities for healing and their illness's in…
Geography (21 works) · Medicine (18 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Political science (17 works) · Law (13 works) · History (12 works) · History (9 works) · Zoonotic diseases and public health (9 works) · African history and culture studies (8 works) · Law (8 works)