Contact
Email:
emmanuelle.roth@rcc.lmu.de
Emmanuelle Roth is an anthropologist and a postdoctoral research fellow in the project “Bloodborne: Hot Zones, Disease Ecologies, and the Changing Landscape of Environment and Health in West Africa,” funded by the European Research Council (2021–2026) and located at the Rachel Carson Center.
Prior to joining the RCC in 2022, Emmanuelle submitted her PhD thesis in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Through fieldwork with the Guinean staff of large-scale “virus hunting” projects in post-Ebola Guinea, her thesis explored how hotspots are made through the practical, epistemological, and affective labor of sampling animals considered wild. At the RCC, she pursues her investigations of discourses of epidemic origins, interactions between humans and nonhumans, and historical configurations of insecurity. Her postdoctoral research examines shifts in understanding, caring for, and valuing bats, primates, and other wild species in the mining area and biodiversity-rich landscape of Mount Nimba, a mountain range that spans the borders of Guinea, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. Emmanuelle also holds a master’s degree in humanitarian action and has been actively involved as a social scientist in outbreaks of Ebola in West Africa.
Selected Publications:
- with Raab, Manuel, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, and Günther Fröschl. “The 2021 Ebola Virus Outbreak in Guinea: Mistrust and the Shortcomings of Outbreak Surveillance. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases 15, no.6 (2021): e0009487. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0009487.
- “Illuminating COVID-19’s Origins. How ‘Virus Hunters’ Display Bats.” Visualizing the Virus, July 1, 2021. https://visualizingthevirus.com/entry/illuminating-covid-19s-origins/.
- “Epidemic Temporalities: A Concise Literature Review.” Anthropology Today 36, no. 4 (2020): 13–6. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12590.
- “Beneath Ebola Ruins. The Enduring Temporariness of the 2014–2016 Outbreak Response in Guinea.” Medicine Anthropology Theory 6, no. 2 (2019): 93–101. https://doi.org/10.17157/mat.6.2.672.