Almudena Mari Saez is a medical anthropologist whose work spans species, scales, time, and materiality. Based at the TransVIHMI unit (IRD/INSERM/University of Montpellier), she has conducted long-term research across West Africa—Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, Gambia, Nigeria, and Benin—exploring how human-animal relations, material practices, and viral transmissions intertwine in everyday life. More recently, she has begun work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Her research extends beyond viruses such as Ebola, Lassa, and Mpox to critically examine outbreak response structures and the embodied knowledge of those who have lived through epidemics. She conceptualizes domestic spaces within the context of disease emergence not as private or apolitical, but as multispecies endeavors where care, risk, and interdependence are continuously negotiated across species and infrastructures. She argues that disease emergence should be understood not as passive stages for intervention, but as historical, multispecies territories shaped by memory, power, and possibility.
Engaging critically with the One Health paradigm, she asks: How do top-down interventions contribute to neglect during disease emergence and influence the politics of surveillance? And how can people’s own understandings of life, care, risk and disease management be better integrated into these processes?
With the support of a newly awarded Junior Professorship Chair, Almudena is developing research on temporal and spatial scales to understand disease emergence, shifting focus from isolated crises to slow transformations, overlooked ecologies, and the ongoing interactions between humans and non-humans. Collaborating within multidisciplinary consortia, she positions anthropology as a tool for understanding and responding to emerging health challenges.
