Emma Broder

Emma Broder is a doctoral candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. Her research explores topics in the histories of American medicine, epidemiology, and public health.

At Radcliffe, she is completing her dissertation on the history of nonspecific disease outbreaks now linked to chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The project examines how clinical medicine, epidemiology, and patient activism have engaged with inconclusive forms of evidence. These outbreaks occurred throughout the country and world in the 20th century, concomitant with advances in biomedicine’s explanatory and curative abilities, changes in America’s disease landscape, and patients’ increased faith in science. Over time, the idea that these outbreaks were discrete, localized events with an unknown viral cause gave way to a picture of chronic, endemic disease with a multifactorial, even potentially psychosomatic, cause. Biomedical and public health inquiry never resolved the identity of these syndromes, generating controversy and political contestation. Through this research, Broder aims to contribute to present-day discussions on long Covid, a similar nonspecific syndrome connected to an epidemic disease posing an urgent public health concern.

Broder received a BA in biology and the Science in Society Program from Wesleyan University. Her work has been supported by a Beeuwkes fellowship from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.