Biography
Lyle Fearnley is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Head of Cluster (Education) in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, Lyle received a Joint Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco. His book, Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter () was Honorable Mention for the 2021 Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize, awarded by the Society for East Asian Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association. In 2021, Lyle was a Finalist for the (Social Sciences and Humanities) based on the research discussed in Virulent Zones.
Current research projects include:
- the politics and science of food safety in contemporary China, including GM rice controversies and the qualification of food safety in live animal “wet markets”;
- an anthropological history of the medical face mask and the contested epistemology of airborne disease;
- changes in the infrastructure of waste management amidst Singapore’s transition from hygienic modernity to circular economy.
Recent
- “.”Critical Public Health.
- “.” International Review of Environmental History Vol. 8, No. 1, 2022.
- 。On Chinese virologist Zhu Jiming, global flu surveillance and the 1957 flu pandemic (written under my Chinese name 方立安).
- Sci-Tech Asia Research Network,Technoviews 11: Podcast on my bookVirulent Zones. Listen onor
Education
- Joint Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco
- B.A. Anthropology, Columbia University
Selected Publications
Books
- .Edited with Anthony Stavrianakis and Gaymon Bennett (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015).
Journal Articles
- “.”Critical Public Health.
- BioSocieties 2021
- Medicine Anthropology Theory 2018.
- “Cultural Anthropology 30(1), February 2015.
- “Epidemic Intelligence: Langmuir and the Birth of Disease Surveillance.”
Behemoth 3, January 2010: 37-56. - “Signals Come and Go: Syndromic Surveillance and Styles of Biosecurity.”
Environment and Planning A 40(7), 2008: 1615-1632.
Selected Media and Talks
- Interviewed on Channel News Asia,. (On Covid-19)
- Interviewed on Channel News Asia,(On Honk! app and informal recycling)
- University of Cambridge, The Center for Global Knowledge Studies, “.” 23 July 2020.
- Columbia University, Weatherhead East Asia Institute, “.” 23 July 2020.