Author Archives: Nga Shi Yeu

NGA Shi Yeu is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University and a Wenner-Gren Wadsworth International Fellow. His research focuses on human-microbe interfaces in Taiwan’s probio-technological platforms and supplemental foodscapes. In this more-than-human healthcare praxis, he probes which particular form of self-nurturance emerges amid both excess and scarcity in the gut space and how health aspirations and scalable values are cultivated through eating good bacteria. His areas of interest intersect with feminist posthumanism, critical food studies, political ecology, virtuality, more-than-human care, and biocapitalism, and are centered on wellness and future promises through a Global Asia lens.
ngashiyeu@gmail.com
A photograph four overlapping printed photographs laid on a wooden table. The photos document a pig burial pit, one shows several people standing near an excavated area, another shows a fenced pit or trench, and the bottom photo shows a large number of pig carcasses piled together in a pit.

Viral Afterlives: Toponymy of Zoonotic Ruptures in West Malaysia

Nga Shi Yeu, Nga Shi Yeu June 12, 2026
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In early 2026, as reports of the Nipah virus outbreak in West Bengal surfaced, the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control responded with a swift escalation of prevention measures, designating the pathogen as a Category V notifiable infectious disease. In an island nation where the pig-farming industry remains a cornerstone of both the economy and cultural diet, this classification represents the highest tier of state concern, mobilizing an apparatus of epidemiological surveillance and media speculation. Yet, as these institutional gears turned, the discourse spilt over into the digital sphere. Online, the virus animated civic narratives inflected by biosecurity anxiety and the fraught moral politics of naming. (read more...)

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