Dr. Ahmed Ragab, assistant professor of science and religion at Harvard Divinity School, will speak at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 at Marshall University’s Visual Arts Center.

Regab is a guest speaker at the fifth annual da Vinci Lecture. Ragab’s speech, titled “From Plague to Ebola: The Social Life of Epidemics and the Making of Global Health,” will address the social making of epidemics, how societies are affected by them and what makes particular infectious diseases an epidemic.

“The talk will investigate the development of quarantines, their meaning in medical and public health literature, and their cost and importance at social and political levels,” Ragab said. “In exploring the history of epidemics and quarantines, the talk explores the making of global health policies, priorities and institutions and how they developed through debates, negotiations and conflicts surrounding such events.”

Ragab has a volume of work that includes the history and development of medieval Islamic sciences, the relationship between science and religion in the medieval and modern Middle East, the history of medieval Islamic hospitals, and the intellectual and cultural history of woman in the Middle East.

His experience with religion, the history of religion and how both affect medicine will guide him in his timely lecture about religion in the Middle East and Ebola.

Bryan Bozeman can be contacted at [email protected].