Speaker: Ozan Ozavcı

Discussant: Benan Grams (Loyola University New Orleans)

Registration: register here

We are pleased to invite you to the online lecture The Great Games of Pandemics. Sanitary Internationalism in the Middle East and North Africa, 1792-1942, offered by Ozan Ozavci on 11 June, 19:00 Turkey Time. This lecture forms part of the Joint lecture series – Hubs, networks and trajectories. The making of global cooperation in the humanities in Istanbul and beyond, organized by the Dutch Institute in Turkey.

Ozan Ozavcı’s presentation will offer an exploratory introduction to how the councils in MENA came into existence and why it is crucial to consider their work as the onset of sanitary internationalism. Drawing on the findings of the ERC COOPERATION project from archives in Europe, North America, MENA and Russia, he will argue that rather than top-down Great Power imposition on MENA polities alone, it was the reciprocal interest calculations that prompted these decentralised, more dynamic and yet largely overlooked forms on transimperial cooperation in pursuit of health security. Yet, all along, the councils had to overcome the familiar barriers to collective action such as Orientalist and racial prejudices, economic and financial considerations, as well as religious and nationalist backlashes within a multi-polar, imperial world.