{"id":7953,"date":"2026-06-17T03:13:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/?p=7953"},"modified":"2026-06-17T03:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T03:15:16","slug":"emory-news-features-cross-disciplinary-collaborative-research-among-lesser-and-history-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/2026\/06\/17\/emory-news-features-cross-disciplinary-collaborative-research-among-lesser-and-history-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Emory News Features Cross-Disciplinary, Collaborative Research among Lesser and Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Emory News Center recently published a feature story about the research led by Dr. Jeffrey Lesser<\/a>, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, in the Bom Retiro neighborhood of S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil. Headlined “Understanding health, history and environment in urban Brazil<\/a>,” the piece highlights the innovative methods that inform Lesser’s work, including for his most recent book, Living and Dying in S\u00e3o Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Duke University Press, 2025). The article also describes the productive cross-disciplinary collaborations that Lesser has cultivated with graduate and undergraduate students, including second-year doctoral student Paula Manfredini<\/a> and History honors student Lucia Alexeyev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find an excerpt of the piece below, and read the full article<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“Lesser, who frequently\u00a0visits\u00a0the neighborhood accompanied by\u00a0student\u00a0researchers\u00a0who\u00a0are just as likely to be\u00a0medical, theology or\u00a0public health\u00a0scholars\u00a0as history majors, researches the historical dimensions of how health problems arise \u2014\u00a0not just via germs or disease, but also from the many different ways people live their daily lives within the urban environment. This unusual approach brings\u00a0his\u00a0team\u00a0into\u00a0contact with\u00a0a wide variety\u00a0of\u00a0individuals\u00a0who shape public health, including policymakers, street-level health teams and and ordinary people\u00a0from\u00a0diverse\u00a0backgrounds. <\/em>

‘Being a historian is a great way to be left alone,’ says Lesser, the Samuel Candler Dobbs\u00a0Professor of Latin American History at Emory. ‘But I started to realize I would be a better scholar if I was surrounded by people who had different expertise than my own, who challenged me as opposed to\u00a0my\u00a0doing it all in my\u00a0own\u00a0head.<\/em>‘”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Emory News Center recently published a feature story about the research led by Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, in the Bom Retiro neighborhood of S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil. Headlined “Understanding health, history and environment in urban Brazil,” the piece highlights the innovative methods that inform Lesser’s work, including for his most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,12,13,19,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-experiential-learning","category-faculty","category-global-reach","category-graduate-students","category-research","category-undergraduate-students","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7953"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7957,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7953\/revisions\/7957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}