Elena Conis

Elena Conis is an American writer and historian of medicine. Her work focuses on the history of medicine, public health, and the environment, with particular focuses on the history of vaccination, infectious diseases, and pesticides. She is currently a Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley,

Education and career Elena Conis received her bachelor's degree in biology from Columbia University in 1996, followed by master's degrees in global health and environment and journalism from the University of California, Berkeley. While studying at Berkeley, she began to work as a columnist and features writer for the Los Angeles Times. An award-winning health journalist, she wrote for the paper's "Esoterica Medica", "Nutrition Lab", and "Supplements" columns until 2011.

After completing her PhD in the history of health sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, Conis joined the faculty of Emory University as an assistant professor in the Department of History and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Faculty Fellow in Health and the Humanities. She taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of health, medicine, and the environment. In 2016, Conis was a Cain Postdoctoral Fellow at the Science History Institute.

Conis is most prominently known for her 2015 book, Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization, which was awarded the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize from the American Public Health Association. She is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society; the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine; and the Department of Media Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also affiliated faculty of the Department of Humanities and Social Science at the University of California, San Francisco.

Selected bibliography

Books

Conis, Elena (2022). How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT. Bold Type Books, 2022.

Journal articles