Catch up on Dr. Carolyn Prouse and Dr. Mohammed Rafi Arefin’s latest publications on biosurveillance and biosecurities.

Urban Political Ecologies of Sewage Surveillance

By Mohammed Rafi Arefin and Carolyn Prouse

During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater became a powerful tool for tracking the virus’s spread in communities. In their recent article in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Mohammed Rafi Arefin and Carolyn Prouse explore how sewage is increasingly being used as a source of both vital and valuable health data. Drawing on interviews with scientists, engineers, public health officials, and others working in this field, the article traces the rapid expansion of wastewater surveillance systems worldwide. At the same time, the authors raise important questions about who builds these systems, who controls the data they produce, and what it means for public health when surveillance infrastructure relies heavily on private companies. It’s a piece that encourages us to think differently about sewage and about the political discourses behind the infrastructures that shape how we monitor public health in cities.

The Technofascist Futures of AI-Driven Disease Surveillance

By Carolyn Prouse

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to track and predict disease outbreaks, and it is often framed as a major breakthrough for global health. In her recent article in Dialogues on Digital Society, Carolyn Prouse takes a step back to ask what kinds of power relations are being built into these systems. Looking from different spaces of disease surveillance and management, such as AI disease-mapping platforms, hospital data systems, and mosquito control technologies, she shows how tools designed to fight disease can also expand surveillance and reinforce existing inequalities. Dr. Prouse pushes us to think critically about who develops these technologies, who benefits from them, and how they might reshape public health governance in ways that demand closer scrutiny.

Geographies of Biosecurity: Racialized Vulnerability, Colonial Extraction, and a New Critical Consciousness

By Carolyn Prouse and Mohammed Rafi Arefin

In their article in Progress in Human Geography, Carolyn Prouse and Mohammed Rafi Arefin reembed the novelty of biosecurity in a world shaped by historical and ongoing forms of colonialism and racial capitalism. The piece traces how contemporary disease surveillance practices, such as genomic sequencing and wastewater monitoring, are tied to much longer histories of extraction and uneven vulnerability. Using the example of the Omicron variant and the international response that followed its detection in southern Africa, the authors show how countries that contribute crucial scientific knowledge can still be marginalized within global health systems. This piece examines biosecurity as a highly political field influenced by historical inequalities.