Join us for the latest Department of Geography and Planning Seminar Series: The First Weapon Against Ebola: Militarism, Global Health, and Canada’s Ebola Vaccine, with Dr. Killian McCormack.
- Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
- Time: 3:30-5:00pm
- Location: Mackintosh-Corry Hall, D214
Abstract: This talk examines the military origins of the first vaccine approved for use against Ebola, ERVEBO. Developed in Canada’s national microbiology lab and dubbed "Canada's vaccine," ERVEBO has been deployed as a medical-humanitarian tool to contain Ebola outbreaks and is championed as a triumph of Canadian scientific ingenuity in supporting global health and humanitarianism. What such framings overlook, however, are the vaccine’s military origins. Vaccine development was driven by bioterrorism anxieties in the early stages of the war on terror and funded by both Canadian and US security initiatives, while initial research was carried out in tandem with the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Disease. The vaccine was initially developed to function as a tool to respond to Ebola as a bioweapon and as an infectious disease that might impede militaries on the ground. ERVEBO’s military origins and connections to biodefense are typically elided in discussions of Canada’s vaccine. Even in prominent critiques of the vaccine’s transfer from a Canadian publicly funded health tool to a private pharmaceutical asset, its military roots are left unexamined. Situating the vaccine in longer histories of medicine, colonialism and imperialism, this talk traces ERVEBO’s military beginnings and explores the convergence of biosecurity, militarism, geopolitics, and global health in shaping vaccine development.
Biography: Dr Killian McCormack is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University. He is a political geographer with research expertise at the intersection of militarism, geopolitics, global health and humanitarianism. He completed his PhD in Geography at the University of Toronto and his work has been published in Progress in Human Geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, and Critical Military Studies.
This event is open to all students, faculty, staff, and members of the public.