Themes that animate my recent work include:

• Scientific (in)capacity in Africa as a lived social and material reality, and in relation to global health inequalities
• The afterlives of scientific materiality and labour in settings of economic uncertainty
• Civic subjectivities – pertaining to duty, public service and entitlement – in relation to scientific expertise in colonial and postcolonial Africa.
• The role of science (and its absence) in the unprotection – that is, the active production or preservation of gaps in protection – of health and, more broadly, of livelihoods and environments, particularly from toxic exposures.

I am a historian of science and public health in late-colonial and postcolonial Africa. Drawing on novel combinations of archival, material, oral, and ethnographic sources, my work focuses mainly on Senegal.

• Collaboratrice étrangère au groupe de recherche Le Médicament comme Objet Social (MEOS), de l'Université de Montréal

Publications principales

En cours de parution:

N. Tousignant. Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal. Duke University Press. 

Publications récentes:

P.W. Geissler et N. Tousignant. Capacity as History and Horizon: Infrastructure, Autonomy and Future in African Health Science and Care. Canadian Journal of African Studies/Revue canadienne des études africaines 50 n.3 (2016) :349-359. 

P. Wenzel Geissler, G. Lachenal, J. Manton, et N. Tousignant, eds. Traces of the Future: An Archaeology of Medical Science in Twenty First Century Africa. Bristol, Intellect Publishers, 2016. 

L. Monnais et N. Tousignant. The Values of Versatility: Pharmacists, Plants, and Place in the French (Post)Colonial World. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 58, 2 (April 2016): 432-462.

N. Tousignant, Un devoir citoyen?" La qualité du médicament entre privé, public et global au Sénégal. Johanne Collin and Pierre-Marie David, eds. Vers une pharmaceuticalisation de la société? Le médicament comme objet social. (Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2016): 127-147.