September 30, 2005 Source: Brock University:
http://www.brocku.ca/webnews/displaystory.phtml?TEMPLATE=template.html&sid=1354 2005 Stanier Lecture - Dirt, Desire and Disgust Brock's Faculty of Applied Health Sciences is pleased to present Dr. Valerie Curtis, Director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, delivering the 2005 Stanier Lecture on "Dirt, Desire and Disgust: Bringing Hygiene Back to Centre Stage," on Thursday, Oct. 6, from 2 to 4 p.m., in the Dr. Charles A. Sankey Chamber at the University. Admission for this event is free and interested members of the public are encouraged to attend. In ancient times being hygienic meant leading an ordered, balanced life. Later it came to mean health, then it became restricted to public health, and most recently, hygiene has come to mean only those private personal practices we don't speak about. Yet hygiene is fundamental to life on the planet. In this lecture, Curtis retraces the evolution of hygiene, from its biological origins as a defence of bodily resources against parasite theft, through to animal cleaning instincts and to the emotion of disgust - the psychological mechanism that prompts the avoidance of disease threats. She explores how culture, science and popular thinking about hygiene builds on this animal foundation. With degrees in engineering, epidemiology and anthropology, Curtis has worked on and studied public health in Africa, Asia and Europe. She founded the Global Public-Private Partnership for Handwashing with Soap, and is an authority on the emotion of disgust. Her main preoccupation is in understanding human behaviour and how to apply this to health promotion. The lecture is sponsored by the Stanier Institute (www.stanier.ca), a non-profit organization dedicated to research in hygiene. The Stanier Lecturer travels to several universities in Canada to deliver a presentation and talk to faculty and this is the first year that the lecture has been held at Brock. For more information about the lecture, please contact Professor Dan Malleck, Community Health Sciences, at 905-688-5550, ext. 5108; e-mail: dan.malleck@brocku.ca
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