For this symposium we aim to bring together anthropologists, historians and science studies scholars who use colonial health reports as a primary source in order to analyse the localized, situated production of medical knowledge, taking into account the asymmetries and cultural diversity of colonial settlement and rule, plantation systems and contexts of frontier. Our central questions are: how do colonial officers and health workers report their work at the clinical and public health fronts? What sort of knowledge do they produce while performing clinical work? In which ways do objects, relations and interpretations combine into knowledge making? What sorts of flows, channels and agencies shape the circulation, negotiation and making of new knowledge? Contributions will come from scholars actively engaged with colonial health reports, drawing mostly from India, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea/Cape Verde and S Tome.