Global Programs Lecture Series

Life After Epidemics: Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of Recovery

• Speaker: Kevin J.A. Thomas, Ph.D.
• Date: Feb. 10, 2026
• Time: 10 - 11 a.m. CST
• Virtual event: Link will be provided upon registration

What happens to survivors when an epidemic ends and the headlines fade? This lecture confronts this question through the accounts of survivors who recovered from the Ebola virus during the world's deadliest outbreak of the disease between 2014-2016.

Based on interviews conducted with 250 survivors in Liberia and Sierra Leone 10 years after the end of the epidemic, the study reveals how, years after their recovery, many continue to endure long-term health issues, economic hardship, and social exclusion, conditions which are often exacerbated by their preexisting marginalization.

Biography: Kevin J.A. Thomas is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rice University and the Director of the Houston Population Research Center, Demography at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. He obtained his Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on international migration, global health, racial and ethnic inequality, children and families, as well as development and social change in Africa. His current research projects examine the outcomes of the children of STEM graduates, children in adoptive families, foreign-born graduates in the STEM workforce, trends in legal immigrant admissions to the United States, and the implications of race-ethnic minority status for the social incorporation of Black immigrants. Dr. Thomas has received several awards, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the Ray Lombra Award for Distinction in the Social Sciences of the Pennsylvania State University, and the Outstanding Book Award of the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War, and Social Conflict section. Dr Thomas has also published dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles and is the author of four books - Diverse Pathways: Race and the Socioeconomic Incorporation of Black, White, and Arab-origin Africans in the US (Michigan State University Press); Contract Workers, Risk, and the War in Iraq: Sierra Leonean Labor Migrants at US military bases (McGill-Queen’s University Press); Global Epidemics, Local Implications: African Immigrants and the Ebola crisis in Dallas (Johns Hopkins University Press); and Life After Epidemics: Ebola Survivors and the Social Dimensions of Recovery (In press, Johns Hopkins University Press).