Chlorine, Bacteria, and the Urban Governance of Water Quality in Lusaka, Zambia, with Hillary Birch

The city of Lusaka, Zambia, experiences recurring cholera outbreaks as rapid urbanization and climate change bring about groundwater contamination and flash floods. What results is an uneven distribution of waterborne disease where drinking water is produced at multiple scales and locations across the city, superseding the ‘modern infrastructural ideal' of centralized and separate circulations of water and waste. Based off of recently completed fieldwork in Lusaka, this presentation will use the measurement and mapping of free residual chlorine in drinking water during a recent cholera outbreak there as an entry to explore how water quality becomes a contested attribute across a range of actors who are drawn into water’s flows in urban space. The use of chlorine to contend with bacteria and protect life in Lusaka makes water quality far more than a straightforward biophysical measurement, offering a view of how water and its quality becomes deeply implicated in the urban governance of the city.

Suggested readings in preparation for this seminar are cited below. PDF Copies of the readings can be found here:

• Gething, P. W., Ayling, S., Mugabi, J., Muximpua, O. D., Kagulura, S. S., & Joseph, G. (2023). Cholera risk in Lusaka: A geospatial analysis to inform improved water and sanitation provision. PLOS Water, 2(8), e0000163. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000163
• Nading, A. M. (2016). Local biologies, leaky things, and the chemical infrastructure of global health. Medical Anthropology, 36(2), 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2016.1186672

Speaker Profile

Hillary Birch is a PhD Candidate in Environmental Studies in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. Her PhD explores the urban governance of water quality in Lusaka, Zambia. She holds a master’s degree in urban governance from Sciences Po, Paris where she studied community responses to Ebola in Monrovia, Liberia, as well as a master’s degree in political science from McGill University. Hillary is a Dahdaleh Global Health Graduate Scholar in Planetary Health, and her research is supported by a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship and an IDRC International Doctoral Research Award.

Register below and join us on Wednesday, February 26, at 1:00 p.m. ET

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