We will host the European Research Council's (ERC) Scientific Council Meeting this June. Leading up to the visit, we are highlighting some of the projects at Durham that are happening thanks to support from the ERC.
Professor Hannah Brown from our Department of Anthropology has been granted ERC funding for a five-year study. Hannah and her team will explore how changing animal-based livelihoods impact health and wellbeing in Sierra Leone and Kenya.
The ALIVEAfrica study is set to produce findings that will enhance our understanding of human-animal relations in changing economic conditions.
Along with colleagues from Kenya, Sierra Leone and Switzerland, Hannah is exploring how people live with and keep animals in Sierra Leone and Kenya through an ethnographic lens.
The goal being to better understand how people farm and hunt animals, and how interactions with animals affect people's health more generally.
Hannah's work in medical anthropology began in Kenya in the early 2000s. There she studied HIV/AIDS responses in Western Kenya, in hospitals, community development organisations and domestic settings.
Later, Hannah was one of a few anthropologists to support the response to the 2014-5 outbreak of Ebola in Sierra Leone, a severe, often fatal, illness caused by a virus.
The ALIVEAfrica project team is studying how changes, such as reduced farming space, is leading farmers to adopt more intensive farming methods.
Methods like penning animals, which increase close interactions between humans and animals, can heighten the risk of disease transmission.
These insights can help us understand emerging zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted to humans by animals) by studying relations with animals that serve as original transmitters for diseases like COVID-19, mpox, and Ebola.
While many studies concentrate on disease transmission and progression, the ERC funding is enabling Hannah and her team to explore how people co-exist with animals in domestic, farming, and hunting environments.
The research is offering unique insights into everyday life and health risks.
Thanks to support from the ERC, research led by Hannah will inform how we respond to disease outbreaks and provide new insights on how they spread. The study will produce its findings during 2026.
Header image caption: (L-R) Tommy Hanson (Njala University); Jane Abel (Durham University); Hannah Brown (Durham University); Jack Jenkins (Durham University); Salome Bukachi (University of Nairobi)
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