As a CHI senior graduate fellow, I am excited to launch my second digital project, Mapping CKDu. My inspiration for this project stems from my dissertation research on ecological-bodily health in the context of Chronic Kidney Disease of uncertain etiology (CKDu), which has quietly escalated into a major global health crisis. Emerging in epidemic proportions over three decades ago, CKDu remains a mystery, not just in terms of its causes but also its prevalence patterns. While environmental, agricultural, and socio-economic factors are widely suspected contributors, there is no consensus around the cause of the disease. Media portrayals have played an important role in highlighting the gravity of the crisis, yet much of the public discourse around CKDu is fragmented.
Recognizing the urgent need to consolidate these narratives, I wanted to create a dynamic, interactive map through this project that traces the global media representation of CKDu. This map will serve as a living archive, recording newspaper articles worldwide that report on various dimensions of the disease, from its suspected causes and devastating impacts on agricultural workers to emerging initiatives advocating for greater attention and resources.
Thus, the main component of this website is the map that includes markers of newspaper reports and research publications in social sciences and humanities that shed light on the socio-political dimensions of CKDu. Scholars, particularly anthropologists, have emphasized the importance of understanding CKDu not only as a medical condition but as a phenomenon deeply shaped by economic inequalities, historical legacies, and labor practices. By including research studies and reports focused on illness experiences—particularly from heavily affected regions such as Sri Lanka, Central America, and parts of South Asia—our project seeks to offer a richer, more contextualized understanding of the crisis.
The website is designed to be an accessible, user-driven platform. The process was less challenging since I had already built a similar project last year. The current website uses a free Bootstrap template that I downloaded from https://htmlcodex.com. I am quite happy about the aesthetics and functionality of my basic template. While my website uses basic, minimalist functions, this template offers advanced options if I want to enhance the user experience.
I used leaflet.js and Map Tiler to build this. Users can filter the map by the type of source (e.g., newspaper article, academic study) only as of now. Each marker on the map links to an entry with the article’s title, author name(s), and a direct link to the original source. This is a work in progress; I have gathered many newspapers in Sinhala that need English translations, which was more time-consuming than I initially expected. So, in the next steps, I will keep adding more markers. This website will also feature a timeline illustrating how public and academic attention to CKDu has evolved.
There are pages allocated to provide an overview of CKDu, a reference page with all the resources I have used on this website, and a contact page with a contact form that users can utilize to communicate with me. At its core, this project visualizes and engages with the global spread and public discourse surrounding CKDu. By amplifying global narratives around a disease that remains insufficiently understood, the project aspires to become an essential resource for policymakers, researchers, and affected communities.
I’m thankful to the CHI fellowship for this excellent learning opportunity. I learned so much along the way while building this website under the guidance of Dr. Gillian MacDonald and with the community of fellows. As I mentioned, this is a work in progress, and I am quite excited to make this lively to reflect my ethnographic fieldwork that I will start this summer in Sri Lanka.
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