PUBLISHED: after polio

Now that the dust has settled after the start of the new semester, I'm happy to share that another output has been published. This reflects upon my recent research on polio eradication and begins to ask critical questions about how a world after polio is being conceptualised and brought into being. In short, the global health industry spends a lot of time guesstimating when polio will be eradicated but draws relatively little attention to what will happen to the assemblage of different polio actors, institutions and campaigns after the disease is eradicated. As I note, it is important to consider where current and future efforts to secure global health after polio are being prioritised.

The piece was something I was working on over my recent nine-month sabbatical, and was published in Health & Place in September. My experience with the journal was very positive and reviews were rapid and considered. The title and abstract are below; the full paper can be found here, with the usual time-limited free access.

After polio: imagining, planning and delivering a world beyond eradication.

As the world comes closer to the eradication of polio the question of preparing for life after this debilitating disease becomes increasingly pertinent. This paper focuses on on-going institutional attempts to conceptualise, plan, and deliver a world after polio. Drawing upon interviews with global health officials and ethnographic fieldwork with eradication initiatives in Nigeria and Pakistan, I explore how international donors are transitioning towards life after the disease and the curtailment of the substantial resources it has successfully mobilised. Focusing specifically on the wind-down of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, I critically examine key risks emerging from polio transition and highlight a series of spatial and political assumptions about the emergent post-polio contours of global health that have largely been obscured by attempts to render transition planning as little more than a technical exercise.