Trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, Lyle Fearnley received a Joint Ph.D. in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco. His book, Virulent Zones: Animal Disease and Global Health at China’s Pandemic Epicenter, is published in 2020 from Duke University Press. Currently, he is conducting two research projects: 1) on the contested futures of rice breeding and genetics in China, in which he analyzes the intersections of Chinese rice genome research, food safety movements, and the human-environment configurations of wet-rice paddy agriculture; 2) on waste, circular economy, and the ecology of health in contemporary Singapore.
