Co-organised by Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique (Rennes/Paris) and the University of Manchester's Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

Location: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Santé Publique, Rennes, FRANCE Dates: Wednesday 24 - Friday 26 August 2011

This three-day international conference addresses the growing need for new historical and social scientific perspectives on the global challenges in understanding and controlling influenza in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The conference has three core objectives. First, it aims to foster comparative analyses of influenza in social memory, science, medicine, public policy, and national and international health. Second, it aims to explore the roots of key problems in current pandemic planning, including access to vaccines, virus surveillance, determinants of risk, biosecurity, and disease governance. Finally, it seeks to examine the nature, value and limitations of historical analysis in disease policy-making.