Please visit this webpage for the Zoom link: www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/event/viral-politics-book-launch

The Viral Politics of COVID-19: Nature, Home, and Planetary Health is a freshly published collection of essays edited by Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter. The biolegal dimensions of our evolving understanding of “home” are analysed as the common thread linking the problem of zoonotic diseases and planetary health with that of geopolitics, biosecurity, bioeconomics and biophilosophies of the plant-animal-human interface. In doing so, the contributions collectively highlight the complexities, challenges, and opportunities for humanity, opening new perspectives on how to inhabit our shared planet. The editors and two contributors to this collection will reflect on the future of legal and biological governance.

Vanessa Lemm is an Honorary Professorial Fellow in Arts at the University of Melbourne. She is also a Research Fellow at “Body, Language and Politics” research group at the Complutense University of Madrid and a Fellow at the Weimar Klassik Stiftung. She recently published Homo Natura: Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophical Anthropology and Biopolitics (EUP, 2021). Her research areas include contemporary continental philosophy, biopolitics and environmental humanities.

Frédéric Keck is a Senior Researcher at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS). He is author of Avian Reservoirs. Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts (Duke University Press, 2020) and (with A. Kelly and C. Lynteris) Anthropology of Epidemics (Routledge, 2019).

Lyle Fearnley is Associate Professor (Anthropology) in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Cluster at Singapore University of Technology and Design. He is the author of Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter (Duke, 2020).

Miguel Vatter is Professor of Politics, Alfred Deakin Institute for Globalization and Citizenship, Deakin University. His latest books include Divine Democracy: Political Theology after Carl Schmitt (Oxford, 2021) and Living Law: Jewish Political Theology from Hermann Cohen to Hannah Arendt (Oxford, 2021). His areas of research are political theology, biopolitics and republicanism.