Placing Global Science in Africa: International Networks, Local Places, and Virus Research in Uganda, 1936-2012

In 1936 representatives of the Rockefeller Foundation's International Health Division (IHD) moved into the former premises of a sleeping sickness research laboratory on the shores of Lake Victoria in Entebbe, Uganda and established the Yellow Fever Research Institute (YFRI). Almost eighty years later, the original laboratory building still stands at the heart of the sprawling campus of the Uganda Virus Research Institute and several of its collaborators, including the United Kingdom Medical Research Council (MRC), the Rakai Health Sciences Program, the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). My dissertation explores the history of virus research based at this institute through three case studies. These case studies are the Rockefeller Foundation's (RF) yellow fever research from 1936 until 1950, the Institute's work on Burkitt's lymphoma between 1962 and 1979, and the HIV/AIDS research of the Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP) in partnership with the UVRI from 1986 until the present. By looking at changes and continuities in the people, places, and things connected to research at the Institute at different moments in time, the project will contribute to a better understanding of the practices and relationships that have characterized international and global health research over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries.