This paper describes recent analyses of pattern and process in the spatio-temporal dynamics of measles. Apart from its public health importance, measles has provided fertile ground for testing ideas in population dynamics over the last 50 years. I consider four basic questions

• The detection of non-stationarity in the spatio-temporal dynamics if measles epidemics, using wavelets
• Analysis of the mechanisms behind these patterns using stochastic time series versions of the standard SEIR model
• The impact of mass vaccination on the spatio-temporal dynamics of epidemics
• The balance between noise and determinism in measles dynamics and how the relative influence of these forces scales with population size.