Bryony Harris presents at conference at Radboud University

In August, PhD Candidate Bryony Harris attended a two-day conference at Radboud University in Nijmegen. How did we Lift the Burden? Infectious Disease Mortality in the Western and Non-Western World (1800-now) was organised by the GREATLEAP network and brought together a community of historical demography experts to tackle this question with a variety of theoretical, empirical and methodological case studies. 

Bryony contributed some findings from the first year of her PhD research. She argued that the early cooperative efforts of the Sanitary Council in Egypt must have played a role in Egypt’s reduced cholera and plague mortality rates in the 1840s, and eventually, upon Egypt’s ultimate epidemiological transition. It was a great opportunity for Bryony to get acquainted with the perspectives and approaches of historical demography, and to attend Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie’s keynote lecture based on her recent publication: Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid​.