Biography
Lyle Fearnley is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Associate Head of Cluster (Education) in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, Lyle received a Joint Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco. His book, Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter () was Honorable Mention for the 2021 Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize, awarded by the Society for East Asian Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association. In 2021, Lyle was a Finalist for the (Social Sciences and Humanities) based on the research discussed in Virulent Zones.
Current research projects include:
- the politics and science of food safety in contemporary China, including GM rice controversies and the qualification of food safety in live animal “wet markets”;
- an anthropological history of the medical face mask and the contested epistemology of airborne disease;
- changes in the infrastructure of waste management amidst Singapore’s transition from hygienic modernity to circular economy.
Recent
- Lyle Fearnley and Sun Chen. 2025. ‘Green Involution: Mediating plant times and lifetimes in a Chinese rice genetics laboratory.’ Cultural Anthropology 40 (3).
- Lyle Fearnley. 2025. ‘Chicken from the soil: qualifying local chicken amidst food distrust in southwestern China.’ Agriculture and Human Values 42.
- Lyle Fearnley and Bharat Venkat. 2025. ‘Reservoirs of history’. History and Technology 40(4).
- Lyle Fearnley and Zhang Zheng. 2023. ‘Live poultry markets beyond health risks: Understanding consumer preferences for live poultry in South China.’ Preventive Veterinary Medicine221.
Education
- Joint Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco
- B.A. Anthropology, Columbia University
Selected Publications
Books
- .Edited with Anthony Stavrianakis and Gaymon Bennett (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015).
Journal Articles
- “.”Critical Public Health.
- BioSocieties 2021
- Medicine Anthropology Theory 2018.
- “Cultural Anthropology 30(1), February 2015.
- “Epidemic Intelligence: Langmuir and the Birth of Disease Surveillance.”
Behemoth 3, January 2010: 37-56. - “Signals Come and Go: Syndromic Surveillance and Styles of Biosecurity.”
Environment and Planning A 40(7), 2008: 1615-1632.
Selected Media and Talks
- Interviewed on Channel News Asia,. (On Covid-19)
- Interviewed on Channel News Asia,(On Honk! app and informal recycling)
- University of Cambridge, The Center for Global Knowledge Studies, “.” 23 July 2020.
- Columbia University, Weatherhead East Asia Institute, “.” 23 July 2020.