UCSF Medical Cultures Lab Seminar: Mobilization of expert knowledge and advice for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

by Silvia Camporesi, PhD
April 13, 2021
10:10 -11:30 am Pacific Time (6:10-7:30 pm British Standard Time)

Join Zoom here

Dr. Camporesi will present her work, as part of the larger ESCAPE project, on the mobilization of expert knowledge and advice for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Italy. The research aimed to evaluate the role played by expert advisory bodies during the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy in 2020, and to understand how expert advice (mainly, although not exclusively, scientific) has been sought for, produced and utilized in the design and implementation of COVID-19 measures in Italy, across the first and second wave in 2020. Dr. Camporesi investigated discrepancies between pre-existing pandemic plans and the coping strategies that emerged during the pandemic, as well as the dynamic relation between the different institutions and expert bodies involved in the pandemic response. The Italy case study is particularly interesting as Italy represents the first country in the Western world having to face and manage the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2020.

Bio: Silvia Camporesi, PhD, is Associate Professor of Bioethics at King’s College London, where she is the Director of the MSc in Bioethics & Society. Dr. Camporesi is an interdisciplinary scholar at heart, with a longstanding interest in emerging biotechnologies and health. She was trained first in biotechnology (University of Bologna) and later in philosophy of medicine (King’s College London). In 2011/12, she was a visiting research fellow in the Department of Social Sciences & Humanities at UCSF (formerly known as Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine).

Dr. Camporesi has worked on questions of public trust in expert knowledge in a variety of contexts; on the question of ethical expertise, and written on the topic of intergeneration ethics conflicts and ethical justification of public health policies in the pandemic.

With Professor Federica Angeli, at the University of York, she is study lead for Italy for the ESCaPE research project: ‘EScAPE COVID-19: Evaluating Science Advice in a Pandemic Emergency’