Biography

Lyle Fearnley is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at SUTD.  Trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, Fearnley 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, is available now from Duke University Press.  Currently, he is conducting two research projects: 1) on the contested futures of rice breeding and genetics in China, in which he analyzes the intersections of Chinese rice genome research, food safety movements, and the human-environment configurations of wet-rice paddy agriculture; 2) on waste, circular economy, and the ecology of health in contemporary Singapore.

Selected Publications

Books

• Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter (Duke University Press, 2020)
• Science, Reason, Modernity: Readings for an Anthropology of the Contemporary. Edited with Anthony Stavrianakis and Gaymon Bennett (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015).

Journal Articles

• “Viral Sovereignty or Sequence Etiquette? Asian Science, Open Data, and Knowledge Control in Global Virus Surveillance.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 2020.
• “After the Livestock Revolution: Free-grazing ducks and influenza uncertainties in South China.” Medicine Anthropology Theory 2018.
• “Wild Goose Chase: The Displacement of Influenza Research in the Fields of Poyang Lake, China.” 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.

Book Chapters

• “Redesigning Syndromic Surveillance for Biosecurity.” In Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff, eds., Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).