Erica Charters

I am Professor of the Global History of Medicine at the University of Oxford, where I am also Academic Lead of Medical Humanities. I research and teach the history of disease, including its relationship with war and imperialism. More specifically, my research focuses on the history of measurement, particularly for health, disease, and bodies, including the early history of statistics. Since disease was the biggest threat to manpower in the early modern world, I look at how disease environments – throughout the world – shaped military, commercial, and agricultural power, as well as how overseas experiences shaped European theories of medicine, biology, and race alongside political methodologies such as statistics and censuses. During Covid-19 I ran a multidisciplinary project on ‘How Epidemics End’. I am currently working on a book project ‘Excess Death: Counting the Costs of Eighteenth-century War, Disease, and Empire.’