Bernardo is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology. He studies the (dis)locations of tropicality in relation to the emergence of zoonoses and vector-borne diseases in the Global North. He focuses on Chagas, a parasitic disease transmitted by an insect vector, that has gained its epidemiological relevance in the US through its association with human migration from Latin America despite growing evidence of local transmission cycles that have continuously been part of US landscapes. He asks about the effects that framing Chagas disease as a foreign threat have on public health policy and clinical practice and care in the US, as well as about the material realities that organize this framework and maintain a broader nationalistic landscape. Finally, since Chagas engages multiple species' life cycles, his project relies on ethnographic methods that attend to the history and politics of the interactions between different living and non-living elements that constitute the environments of transmission and parasitic development in the US.
Department and Institution:
Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
