Description
This roundtable brings together scholars working at the intersection of global health and International Relations to celebrate the intellectual contributions of Stefan Elbe to this field. Stefan’s work has been foundational in establishing global health—and particularly global health security—as a central concern in IR. Over the past two decades, his work has illuminated how health issues have become deeply entangled with security politics, scientific and technological developments, and global governance. Moreover, Stefan’s scholarship has continuously propelled the field forward by creatively bringing together diverse theoretical traditions, such as pharmaceuticalisation, information theory, postcolonial studies, infrastructure studies, and science and technology studies, to shed light on the evolving nexus of health and security. Through this intellectual range, Stefan has opened new conceptual pathways and vocabularies for understanding the political life of biological threats, medical countermeasures, and the infrastructures that sustain global health security practices. The roundtable convenes scholars whose research has been influenced by Stefan’s work to reflect on his intellectual contributions, the new thinking it has generated, and the directions in which it continues to push the study of global health politics. It considers how Stefan’s intellectual curiosity exemplifies the kind of open, interdisciplinary, and forward-looking scholarship needed for the next 50 years of the discipline.
