Research project

Infectious Diseases, Security and Ethics

Research groups:
Lead researchers:

Professor Christian Enemark
Status:

Not active

Project overview

The principal innovation of the Project is its integration of security analysis and ethical inquiry. Taking a ‘security’ approach usually involves political priorities and does not systematically engage in normative assessment, and an ‘ethics’ approach is concerned with conflicting values (e.g. balancing individual human rights against the greater good of society). In the context of specific infectious disease risks and human health more generally, the Project seeks to make findings about the ethics of securitisation. These findings – the fruit of critical engagement with academic and non-academic literature on the science, history, politics, law, economics and sociology of public health – inform the development of policy recommendations for improving governments’ approaches to disease control.

During 2009 - 2013, the PI collaborated with Professor Michael Selgelid (Monash University) and the Project received funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Project grant no. DP0987012).