Infectitious Disease Histories
The Transformation of Infectious Disease Histories
Three Decades of Paleogenetics and Historians’ Responses
Monica H. Green
13 January 2026 – 5 PM (CET)
In 1994, it was announced for the first time that molecular fragments of a premodern pathogen had been retrieved from premodern human remains.
In the subsequent 30 years, the field of pathogen paleogenetics has developed exponentially, with dozens of nearly complete genomes retrieved for both viral as well as bacterial diseases.
The most important aspect of this new field, however, is not simply identifying the types of diseases.
It is in identifying their particular evolutionary strains, for in that knowledge lies evidence for the epidemiology and circulation patterns of infectious diseases in the past, an aspect of history previously obscure even for those diseases that leave clear osteological markers.
For plague, leprosy, and syphilis, we now have increasingly complex histories that push narratives beyond Europe into Afro-Eurasia, the Americas, and Oceania.
What do those stories that go so far beyond our documentary records tell us? And how might we read our written sources with new eyes and new questions?
About the Speaker ...
Monica H. Green is a Medieval historian specialising in the history of premodern plague and medicine.
Her early work focused on medieval women’s healthcare; among her notable publications are Women’s Healthcare in the Medieval West: Texts and Contexts (2000) and her edition of The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (2001). Since the early 2010s she has expanded her research toward global health history, investigating infectious diseases such as plague and leprosy through interdisciplinary approaches combining bio-archaeology, palaeogenetics and traditional historical methods. Green has received numerous honours, including the Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize (2009), election as Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (2011), as well as awards for excellence in teaching and scholarship.
