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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 first book, 'Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China's Pandemic Epicenter,' will be published in October 2020 (Duke University Press). Currently, he is conducting research on the contested futures of rice breeding and genetics in China, a project that analyzes the intersections of Chinese rice genome research, food safety movements, and the human-environment configurations of wet-rice paddy agriculture; and on waste and urban ecology in Singapore in the aftermath of hygienic modernity.

Books

Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China's Pandemic Epicenter (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2020).
https://www.dukeupress.edu/virulent-zones

Selected Articles
1."After the Livestock Revolution: Free-grazing Ducks and Influenza Uncertainties in South China." Medicine Anthropology Theory 5(3), 2018: 72-98.
https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.5.3.378
2. “Wild Goose Chase: The Displacement of Influenza Research in the Fields of Poyang Lake, China.” Cultural Anthropology 30(1), February 2015.
3. “Epidemic Intelligence: Langmuir and the Birth of Disease Surveillance.”
Behemoth 3, January 2010: 37-56.
4. “Signals Come and Go: Syndromic Surveillance and Styles of Biosecurity.”
Environment and Planning A 40(7), 2008: 1615-1632.

Experience

  • –present
    Assistant professor , Singapore Institute of Technology