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Outreach

Workshops & Community Engagemen

  1. Comprehensive training to conduct Aedes mosquito sampling: All field staff in the four study countries underwent training to conduct Aedes mosquito and larvae sampling, using ladles, prokopack aspirators, and BG-sentinel traps. The team was trained to conduct mosquito sampling in urban and suburban areas, ports and -cruicially- moving vehicles, such as buses and trains.
  2. Population genetics and genomics workshop: A training workshop on population genetics and genomics with early-career researchers from Tanzania and Mexico was held in India from 12-15 September 2023, at the ICMR-institute Vector Control Research Centre, Puducherry (India). This was our first substantial activity to foster South-South early-career exchange and training.
  3. DIY Ovitrap Development: Following instructions from our German external partner Dr. Norbert Becker, and building on a fieldtrip to the German study sites our initial kick-off workshop in June 2022 in Heidelberg, PhD candidate John Paliga Masalu built his own version of the Ovitrap now used in Tanzania.
  4. The Infrastructural Go-Along (Workshop/Lab at the GAA conference Contested Knowledge, Munich): Dr. Carsten Wergin led an experimental lab at the German Anthropological Asssociation (DGSKA)'s conference in Munich in July 2023. The lab focused on the infrastructural go-along --a methodological approach that is both original and crucial for our project. Together with approx. 25 anthropologists present at the lab, we conducted a small fieldwork exercise and explored the potential of the method.
  5. Community Engagement: Our research teams actively engaged with local communities in 2024 to raise awareness about mosquitoes, mosquito-borne diseases, and the importance of vector control. The team conducted training sessions with train and bus attendants to explain project goals, how traps operate and why it is necessary to collect mosquitoes inside vessels. [Pictures?]

 

Seminars & Public Talks

1. Teaching 2023: From 'Speaking About' to 'Speaking Well': Explorations in Multispecies Ethnography

  • Carsten Wergin offered the course to engage with how scholars explore new theoretical and methopological approaches to issues of climate change, planetary health and well-being. Students of Anthropology and Transcultural Studies learned and applied some of the methods we use in our project during fieldwork in the Heidelberg region.

2. Field study course 2023: Human-environment relations and infrastructure in Tanga, Tanzania

  • Exercises: Uli Beisel (FU Berlin), Charrlotte Adelina (FU Berlin), Amri Abas (IHI) and John Paliga Masulu (IHI) conducted two seminars in summer term 2023 at FU Berlin and a 10-day field trip to Tanga (Tanzania) in July/August 2023 with 12 students of the MSc Geographical Development Studies under the theme "Human-environment relations and infrastructure in Tanga, Tanzania", which drew on the project.

3. Talk 2023: Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for tackling global health challenges: International Summer School at Heidelberg University

  • Carsten Wergin was a speaker at an interdisciplinary summer school to equip early-career scientists and practitioners with the main concepts and methods of researching and implementing NbS, including: theory, study design, data and modelling, financing, determining value and implementation as well as application to the converging global challenges of climate change and pandemics.

4. Conference 2023: Ifakara Annual Scientific Conference

  • Tanzanian team members of our project presented and discussed our thematic and methodological approach and preliminary results at the Ifakara Annual Scientific Conference 2023, held at Ifakara Health Research Institut in August 2023.

5. Keynote Adress 2023: “Live and Let Die in the Anthropocene: Multispecies Conviviality and the Challenge of Interdisciplinary Engagement”

  • Dr Carsten Wergin gave this keynote address at the international conference URBAN SPACES AND MOSQUITOES ON A CHANGING PLANET, 23-25 March 2023, at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain. He presented our project to an international audience made up of humanities and social science scholars as well an entomologists working in the field of emerging diseases linked to climate change.