In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, as pundits, politicians, and citizens all pored over data dashboards detailing infection rates and deaths, Heidi Tworek asked: What is the historical rationale for how statistics came to become the authentic mode to represent disease? Bringing historical insight to a contemporary problem of science communication, Tworek explores the power and limit of statistics to drive public health interventions.
Heidi Tworek
Heidi Tworek is associate professor of international history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as a nonresident fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Tworek is the author or coeditor of three books, including the award-winning News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Harvard University Press, 2019). Tworek has written over 30 articles and book chapters on the history of media and communications, capitalism, platform governance, infrastructure, and health communications. She has written multiple policy briefs and testified before governments around the world on hate speech, digital democracy, and disinformation. Her current work examines the history and policy of health communications as well as seeks to create global research on platform governance. In September 2020, she was the lead author on a widely publicized report on Covid-19 communications in nine countries on five continents around the world, entitled Democratic Health Communications during Covid-19: A RAPID Response. Tworek writes regularly for major media outlets in English and German as well as appearing on radio and TV.
Tworek is the author or coeditor of three books, including the award-winning News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Harvard University Press, 2019). Tworek has written over 30 articles and book chapters on the history of media and communications, capitalism, platform governance, infrastructure, and health communications. She has written multiple policy briefs and testified before governments around the world on hate speech, digital democracy, and disinformation. Her current work examines the history and policy of health communications as well as seeks to create global research on platform governance. In September 2020, she was the lead author on a widely publicized report on Covid-19 communications in nine countries on five continents around the world, entitled Democratic Health Communications during Covid-19: A RAPID Response. Tworek writes regularly for major media outlets in English and German as well as appearing on radio and TV.