School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

I am an STS researcher broadly interested in (mostly ethnographic) studies of practices centred on calculation, prediction, and maintenance, as well as care for humans, animals, and the environment. Currently, I am exploring these themes in the context of zoonotic diseases and epidemiology.

PhD Project: Modelling in Practice

My doctoral research investigates the practices of mathematical modelling in the context of zoonotic diseases, with a particular focus on avian influenza. Mathematical models are widely used to predict and manage infectious disease outbreaks, shaping policy decisions on vaccination strategies, movement restrictions, grazing boundaries, animal culling, etc. These models can have significant consequences for multispecies collectives, yet the outcomes they produce depend heavily on how socio-ecological relationships are valued and operationalised, as well as the assumptions that underpin them within the modelling process. Avian influenza, especially the H5N1 strain, presents a particularly complex case. The virus affects both poultry and wild birds — two groups with distinct behaviours, ecologies, and roles in disease transmission — and, as recent outbreaks demonstrate, it can mutate and cross into mammals.

To understand how these complexities are navigated in practice, I am conducting ethnographic fieldwork at several research institutions in the UK and the Netherlands. I focus on how modellers themselves understand their work and its implications, the practical and ethical questions they grapple with, how these shape the models and predictions they produce, and the broader consequences that follow.

Supervised by: Dr. Lukas Engelmann (STIS), Prof. Lisa Boden (The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies), Dr. John Nott (STIS).

Other roles & responsibilities

Research Assistant for Population Health in Practice: Towards a Comparative Historical Ethnography of the Demographic Health Survey (PI: Dr. John Nott)

The project employs ethnographic and historical methods to compare the history and current implementation of the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) in Malawi, Tanzania, and Ghana. Funded primarily by USAID, since the 1980s, the DHS has grown into one of the most prolific and influential population health infrastructures in the Global South. As a result, DHS data is regularly employed in the planning health interventions and resource allocation. The research details the social, material and political conditions which culture the collection, interpretation and mobilization of ostensibly comparable data within various national contexts. This project will, therefore, provide the first comparative analysis of how cross-sectional surveillance data is made, and made useful, within the infrastructures of Global Health.

Publications

Keere, K. D., & Novokreshchenov, M. (2024). A crypto way out: cryptocurrency, techno-economic imaginaries, and crisis in Russia. Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(2), 247–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2024.2413111