Dr Mark Honigsbaum

Overview

I am a medical historian and journalist with wide-ranging interests encompassing health, science, the media and contemporary culture. A regular contributor to The Observer and The Lancet, I am the author of five books including The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris (New York and London: Norton; Hurst, 2019), The Fever Trail: In Search of the Cure for Malaria (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2002), and Living With Enza: The Forgotten Story of Britain and the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918 (Macmillan, 2009), which was longlisted for the Royal Society science book of the year in 2009.

A specialist in the history of pandemics and infectious disease, my academic work combines insights from the medical and environmental humanities and the philosophy and sociology of science. My current research focuses on the phenomenon of "vaccine hesitancy". Through case studies of recent vaccine controversies I seek to understand the role that the media and partial or incomplete scientific knowledge of vaccines plays in suspicion of this valuable medical technology. I am also developing a project interrogating the phenomenon of pandemic remembrancce and the tension between narrative framings of Covid-19 as a "crisis" and collective experiences of grief and loss enabled by connective digital technologies.

During the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic I was commissioned by the Wellcome Trust to conduct interviews with key scientific actors and health responders for an oral history documenting the medical and humanitarian response to the outbreak. Based at at Queen Mary, University of London, the project ran alongside a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship into the intellectual origins of modern ideas of disease ecology.

Prior to obtaining my PhD in 2011, I was Chief Reporter of The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper, and enjoyed a long career as an investigative journalist and feature writer at newspapers such as the Evening Standard and the Independent on Sunday. In 1996 I produced two documentaries for Channel 4 Dispatches exposing the role of M16 and Rolls Royce in re-arming the Argentine Navy in defiance of British sanctions against the Galtieri regime. The documentaries were debated in Parliament and were short-listed for the 1996 Royal Society of Televison Award.

Alongside my academic work, I also produce animations on science subjects – my animation, How Pandemics Spread, has been viewed more than 3 million times on TED-ED - and a podcast, "Going Viral", on the history and science of infectious disease.

My most recent book, The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris (New York; London: Norton, Hurst, 2019) was an “editor’s pick” in the New York Times and a “health book of the year” in the Financial Times. The revised 2020 paperback edition, containing a new chapter and epilogue on Covid-19, was named a "science book of the year" by The Times.

Employment

• Head of Events, City, University London, Jul 2019 – present

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