Elena Conis

Faculty – Acting Dean, Professor

Alumni

Elena Conis is a writer and historian of medicine, public health, and the environment. Prior to joining the Graduate School of Journalism, she was a professor of history and the Mellon Fellow in Health and Humanities at Emory University; the Cain Fellow at the Science History Institute; and an award-winning health columnist for the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization (Arthur Viseltear Award 2015); How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT (William Welch Medal 2024 and National Association of Science Writers Book Award finalist 2023); and, with Aimee Medeiros and Sandra Eder, Pink & Blue: Gender, Culture, and the Health of Children. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Institutes of Health, and she is an affiliate of Berkeley’s Department of History and UCSF’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. She holds a PhD in history of medicine from UCSF; masters degrees in journalism and public health from Berkeley; and a bachelors degree in biology from Columbia University. For more information, check out www.elenaconis.com.

TEACHING SCHEDULE:

REPORTING INTERESTS

Environment, Gender/Sexuality, HPV, Health, Science, Social Issues, chicken pox, journalism, measles, mumps, vaccines

MEDIA PLATFORMS

Narrative Writing