Elena Conis

Faculty – Interim Dean, Professor

Alumni

Elena Conis is a professor of journalism and history and served as Acting/Interim Dean of Journalism in academic year 2024-25. Prior to joining the Berkeley faculty in 2016, 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. A historian of medicine, health, and the environment, 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. She is currently working on a book on the global history of measles. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Institutes of Health. She is an affiliate of 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, please visit 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