Dr Emily Webster

Dr. Emily Webster is an Assistant Professor in the History and Philosophy of Health and Medicine in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University. Her research focuses on the ecology of historical epidemics, drawing on contemporary biology and ecology alongside traditional historical methods to tell multi-species, multi-scalar histories of infectious disease that ground humans in their physical environments. She is currently working on her book project, Infectious Ecologies: A Biological History of Epidemics in the Urban British Empire. Prior to joining Durham, Emily worked as a postdoctoral research associate at University College Dublin on the AHRC-IRC-funded project Typhoid, Cockles, and Terrorism: The Turbulent History of Anglo-Irish Typhoid Control. She received her PhD in History and MS in Public Health Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2021. 

Outside of research, Dr. Webster serves as a review editor for Environmental History Now, an online platform for women and nonbinary graduate students and early career researchers.