Episode 90: Mapping the Spread of the Pandemic with Dr. Xiurong Zhao, Professor at Renmin University of China
Dr. Xiurong Zhao is from China and has been teaching at the Renmin University of China for 22 years, which is in Beijing. She mainly teaches Chinese students but has also taught American students and Swiss students.
Dr. Zhao was visiting scholar at the University of Harvard, UCL, and the University of Warwick. She was seconded to the University of Geneva for four years.
Her research interest included the social history of medicine in Early Modern England. The project that she is going to do at Oxford University will be on the topic of “The use of GIS to map the infectious diseases in Victoria England”, which is sponsored by Gale and Oxford Bodleian library. She appreciates the opportunity.
How to Solve the Problem of Tracing Who Got a Disease and Who Was Around Them?
As a historian of western medicine, in the early modern period, Dr. Zhao has turned her attention to the courses on the causes of diseases and their spread and more importantly, the social impacts of these diseases. As historians, we traditionally read documents and then try to figure out the causes and the spread of the diseases. We try to understand the social reasons that lead to an outbreak of the epidemic and the impact which they bring on society. Dr. Zhao tries to trace with the help of the geographic information system. There is also a new research method where we permit a domain which is the dynamic link between databases and maps so that the data is automatically reflected on these maps. This has not been used in historical research a lot but the GIS provides accident means for visualizing and assessing epidemiological data which reveals trends, dependencies, and interrelationships that would be more difficult to discover in the tables. The GIS can help generate the thematic maps reaching color maps or proportional symbols to denote the intensity of a disease or vector. In comparison with the tables and charts, maps developed using GIS are easy to understand and even those who are not familiar with the technology can be able to understand it.
What are the Dimensions for Doing this Research?
Dr. Zhao uses the parish record from the Victorian period because, in that period, the parish was a basic unit for the record. It had records like birth, death, and marriage of the people. Additionally, from the parish record, there is a population number that has been recorded. From there, you can work out the density from the given population number. The sense started in 1801 in England but it was limited until later in during the Victorian period. There is hope that more useful data will be found like age, working activities, and gender of the population. In terms of the spread of disease, we need to know where the disease started, how it spread, how it grew over time, and what vectors were involved. We also can find what parts of the population were affected by the disease. When talking about changes over time, an example can be used when Dr. Zhao got the details of the disease outbreak in oxford that happened in 1832, 1839, and 1854. She wishes to compare how it affected the population during these three outbreaks. After going through that data, she then can describe the differences between each outbreak.
How Complete is the Data in Victorian England?
Dr. Zhao has done lots of research on public health during the Victorian Period. In that period, lots of regulations were passed. For example, there was one that made the people keep a better record of their parish including things like birth, death, and marriage in England in 1812. This all requires the detailed keeping of their records. Some records have been lost however we can still find a useful amount of data. There is a book in the Bogley Library describing cholera in oxford during 1854 which gave lots of information as well. It has many cases and in each case, there is the death, the gender, and the occupation for each record. Dr. Zhao plans to expand the project for other years. She originally started her research looking at the year 1832 which was the first outbreak of cholera in England. She then wants to expand her research to other diseases and locations.
Contact Dr. Xiurong Zhao: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xiurong-zhao-b1527111
Learn more about Renmin University of China: https://www.linkedin.com/school/renmin-university-of-china/
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