Professor Tony Barnett

Professor Barnett joined LSHTM in 2013 after ten years at the London School of Economics with honorary status at the LSHTM. He retains an attachment to the Department of Social Policy at the LSE. He has a general interest in the social science of infectious diseases.

For some years, he has worked closely with colleagues from the Royal Veterinary College. In November 2014, he, Professor Dirk Pfeiffer, Dr Guillaume Fournié (from the Royal Veterinary College) and Dr Punam Mangtani from the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at LSHTM, and colleagues from Bangladesh and from Chatham House, were awarded a grant from the Zoonoses and Emerging Livestock Systems (ZELS) Programme: Reducing the risk to livestock and people to research the ways in which the network structure of live bird markets enhance or retard the likelihood of transmission of avian influenza. This project is funded by the BBSRC, ESRC, DSTL, MRC, NERC and DFID The research, scheduled to finish in 2017/8, will include careful mathematical modelling of poultry production and marketing, detailed ethnography and development of an experimental epidemiology.

Together with colleagues from Imperial College Institute of Security Science,and Technology, notably Professor Peter Biggins and Dr Andrew Burton, he is exploring an innovative approach to preparation and resilience in the face of pandemic disease events.