Podcast Summary: Julia Ross Cummiskey, "Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global" (Ohio UP, 2024)

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Ifa B. (B)
Guest: Dr. Julia Ross Cummiskey (C), Assistant Professor, History of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University
Date: October 16, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features a wide-ranging and incisive conversation with Dr. Julia Ross Cummiskey about her new book, Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda: Between Local and Global. The book examines the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) as a lens into the complicated intersections of local and global health research, power, expertise, and identity over nearly a century. Dr. Cummiskey shares her personal and professional journey, the making of the UVRI, the role of science and politics in Uganda, and how deeply contested categories like "local," "global," "extraction," "race," and "expertise" have shaped not just virology but also the moral economy of global health.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Julia Ross Cummiskey's Intellectual Journey

[02:00 – 10:16]

• Dr. Cummiskey shares an autobiographical account, highlighting her path from aspiring epidemiologist in middle school, through public health and history training, to global health historian.
• Notable reflection:

  "I think I am a case study in why it's okay if you don't always know exactly where you want to go, especially in your 20s, and that you can take some kind of twists and turns..." (C, 02:03)

• Influences: Memoirs by CDC "disease detectives," an eye-opening class on South Asian women's history, and hands-on work with public health in NYC led her to question the true complexity of "global" policy and its local application.

2. Introduction to the Book: Main Argument & Scope

[10:59 – 17:10]

• Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda tells the institutional and scientific history of the UVRI from 1936 to the present, arguing that the categories "local" and "global" are far more fluid and strategically enacted than fixed.
• “Part of the reason it [the Institute] was able to survive for so long was because it could take on the qualities of either global or local in different moments... And the people that worked there did the same thing.” (C, 14:35)
• The book challenges simplistic accounts of global health and foregrounds the ways individuals and institutions actively negotiate and rework identities and expertise in shifting political, racial, and funding landscapes.

3. Methodology & Ethical Choices

[17:28 – 31:20]

• Heavy reliance on classic historical methods: deep archival work, oral histories, close reading of annual reports, and published literature.
• Cummiskey describes the challenges of patchy archives—Rockefeller, colonial government, and UVRI’s own, often unprocessed, collections.
• Sensitive archival language:
  • She intentionally replaced colonial terms like "boy" with "worker", but retained the original in brackets to expose power structures—

  "...the use of the word boy... does signify something about the way that the people using that term thought about the people working for them." (C, 25:12)

  • For "scientist," she opts for “researcher” for historical precision and to illuminate shifting credential boundaries.
• Decisions around photographs: She describes, rather than shows, disturbing Burkitt’s lymphoma images:

  "...the possible benefits of including them did not outweigh the possible harms..." (C, 29:55)

4. The UVRI: Three Eras, Three Viruses

[32:28 – 52:07]

• The book is structured around the Institute’s work on yellow fever, Burkitt’s lymphoma, and HIV/AIDS, each associated with distinct eras, researchers, and political contexts.

a. Yellow Fever Era (1936–1950s)

• UVRI founded to investigate "silent yellow fever" in East Africa, serving colonial (not local Ugandan) priorities.
• "This was not a problem of sick Ugandans... This is really about protecting colonial and imperial interests." (C, 34:38)
• Along the way, the Institute also discovered other important viruses (Zika, Chikungunya, West Nile), building virological capacity and local ecological knowledge almost incidentally.

b. Burkitt’s Lymphoma (1950s–1979)

• The mission shifted as independence loomed; UVRI needed to justify its continued existence and funding.
• Investigated the regional specificity of Burkitt's lymphoma. The ultimately incorrect hypothesis that it was mosquito-borne helped attract international attention and funding.
• This era saw the birth of the “local partner” paradigm—originally intended as a temporary solution during staff shortages, it became a model for future collaborations.

c. The HIV/AIDS Epoch (1980s–1990s and beyond)

• Amidst the devastation of civil war and meager resources, UVRI’s expertise and facilities made it central to global HIV/AIDS research.
• The state made collaboration through UVRI mandatory, "bringing enormous amounts of expertise, of resources."
• Ugandan scientists claimed autonomy, negotiating with foreign researchers and leveraging their “local” status for real power.

5. Power, Race, and Gender

[52:07 – 59:49]

• Gender: Female “scientists” at UVRI only appear in the 1980s; women’s roles are present but not deeply explored in the book, which Cummiskey cites as a future avenue.
• Race:
  • The book’s analysis of race deepened over time, shaped by contemporary discussions (e.g., Black Lives Matter, 2020).
  • She notes how global health often veils race behind national and institutional categories but that historical actors’ decisions were often “strongly informed by ideas about race” even when unspoken.
  • She reframes her own narrative choices as part of “thinking about the ways in which the scholarship around race and racism needed to inform... not only the story of the Uganda Virus Research Institute, but the story of global health.” (C, 57:16)

6. Extraction in Global Health

[59:49 – 68:37]

• Extraction is literal and metaphorical—from blood samples to knowledge to local expertise.
• In the colonial era, extraction was assumed and justified by imperial ideology:

  "It was understood to be absolutely the right, the privilege and in fact the responsibility of colonial workers to extract things from Uganda and from Ugandans..." (C, 61:36)

• Over time, ethical and practical pressures forced negotiation, compensation, and eventually more mutual collaboration, especially as Ugandan scientists and communities came to the fore.

7. The Local/Global Dichotomy, Translation, & Ownership of Expertise

[68:37 – 77:46]

• The "local partner" role, initially provisional, became entrenched—and remains a key place of negotiation for authority and credit.
• Cummiskey discusses how scientific findings became "legible" to global audiences, and the sometimes-petty proprietary battles over claims and priority.
• Notable vignette: The drama between British and Ugandan researchers over who "owns" a discovery or gets credit, which shaped funding and reputation.

  "There's a certain delight as a historian in seeing the juxtaposition of the very, very consequential and the very, very petty..." (C, 77:27)

8. Viruses Now: COVID, Zika, and Beyond

[77:56 – 86:39]

• The COVID-19 pandemic has made the book’s themes newly urgent.
• Cummiskey argues for the critical importance of institutions like the UVRI:

  "...the kinds of research that you can do at the Uganda Virus Research Institute today are not kinds of research that you could do at a place that you start up tomorrow... every research project benefits from generations of tacit knowledge..." (C, 84:28)

• She underscores ongoing risks from viruses and the irreplaceable nature of deep, longitudinal institutional experience.

9. Next Project

[86:52 – 89:58]

• Cummiskey is researching the history of public health communication and social marketing in East Africa, examining campaigns for HIV prevention, family planning, and the marketing of health in the context of evolving media and global development.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On uncertainty and career paths:

  "I think I am a case study in why it's okay if you don't always know exactly where you want to go..." (C, 02:03)

• On the flexibility of "local" and "global":

  "I couldn't place individual people or the Institute itself in one or the other of those categories...local and global are relative terms. And if we want to understand how global health works, we need to recognize that people that are labeled as local are not limited to that role..." (C, 14:33-15:10)

• On archiving and the language of power:

  "I made a decision to leave it [the term 'boy'] in brackets... so it would be visible to the reader that that was a change I was making..." (C, 25:12)

• On ethics of imagery:

  "...the possible benefits of including them [photos of sick children] did not outweigh the possible harms..." (C, 29:55)

• On the nature of extraction:

  "...the colonial endeavor was fundamentally extractive...there’s almost a manifest destiny to it..." (C, 61:36)

• On the future of viral threats:

  "...every time they hear somebody say that Covid was a once in a lifetime pandemic, they should...remember that first of all, it’s not even the first pandemic in most of our lifetimes...it won't be the last." (C, 84:53)

Key Timestamps

• [02:00] – Julia’s career journey
• [10:59] – Introduction to the book’s central argument
• [17:28] – Methodology, use of archives, handling problematic language
• [32:28] – The three eras/viruses and the UVRI
• [52:07] – Race and gender in UVRI’s history and in global health
• [59:49] – Extraction as a throughline in the story
• [68:37] – Expertise, translation, and proprietary scientific claims
• [77:56] – Present and future: COVID-19, Ebola, and the value of UVRI
• [86:52] – Dr. Cummiskey’s next research project

Closing Thoughts

Dr. Julia Ross Cummiskey’s Virus Research in Twentieth-Century Uganda is a rich institutional and social history compellingly told. It challenges readers to reconsider their assumptions about knowledge, agency, and power in global health, urging a more nuanced understanding of the ever-shifting local/global nexus. The episode offers both a master class in historical method and a timely reminder of why the past of virus research matters for our present and future.