Kim Yi Dionne, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Government, Smith College
11:15 am – 12:45 pm, March 2, 2015, 438 Oak Hall
The ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest on record, having claimed thousands of lives. The epidemic increased exponentially months after national governments and international agencies were made aware of the outbreak in March 2014. Why have West African governments and the international community struggled in responding to Ebola? This presentation will provide an overview of the outbreak to date, the responses by local, national, and international actors, and the obstacles faced when trying to contain a disease epidemic and care for those infected. It will also feature preliminary results from an experiment conducted in the U.S. to understand American attitudes during the Ebola outbreak.
Kim Yi Dionne is Five College Assistant Professor of Government at Smith College. She studies and teaches African politics, particularly the politics of interventions aimed at improving the human condition and the opinions of ordinary Africans toward such interventions. Much of her published research examined HIV/AIDS. Her current book project is on the global response to HIV/AIDS in Africa, with a focus on Malawi, where she was a Fullbright Scholar in 2008-2009. She is also a regular contributor to The Monkey Cage, a blog on politics and political science at The Washington Post.
The talk is sponsored by the Gamma Gamma Gamma Chapter of Pi Sigma Alpha, the Department of Political Science, the Research Program on Global Health and Human Rights at the Human Rights Institute, and the Medical Anthropology Forum. A reception will follow the talk.
For more information, contact: Fred Lee at fred.lee@uconn.edu