The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the world. On top of medical and scientific research, learning to live with COVID also requires identifying, understanding and tackling the social, cultural, political, ethical and environmental shifts emerging from the pandemic.
Drawing on longstanding expertise in the social study of science and in the medical humanities at the University of Exeter, this digital platform draws together cutting-edge work on those societal changes, while also providing a platform for collaboration, and for seeing connections across boundaries. This platform aims to engage members of the public in humanities and social science research, by offering routes to contact researchers, to participate in projects, and to offer their own research questions and priorities.
We have distributed these into seven broad themes — with some falling in more than one theme — listed below (in no particular order) with their ten most recent entries. If there’s more than ten entries, click on the theme link to browse all of them.
Theme: Law, Business and Education
- Intellectual property rights in times of crisis (Karen Walsh )
- Applying for development consent during lockdown: The Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station (Catherine Caine)
- How do educational leaders navigate the crisis? (Ben Hudson)
- Getting married in pandemic times (Rebecca Probert)
- The Educational Impact of School Closure (Anna Mountford Zimdars)
- The contract and insurance law implications of COVID (Kyriaki Noussia)
- The impact of COVID-19 on food supply chains (Richard Maull)
- How is COVID-19 reworking how we research and write history? (Martin Moore)
- Lockdown in low-income countries (Julian Jamison)
- A new six-country social survey on COVID-19 (Julian Jamison)
- How much are people willing to pay for protective products? (Climent Quintana-Domeque)
- Is COVID-19 a moment for rebuilding the global food system? (Branwyn Poleykett )
Theme: Nature and Environment
- How has outdoor exercise been affected by the pandemic? (Carolyn Petersen)
- COVID-19 as method: Managing the ubiquity of waste and waste-collectors in India (Tridibesh Dey)
- Applying for development consent during lockdown: The Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station (Catherine Caine)
- Covid19 in the Inter-Andean Forests of Colombia (Dunia H. Urrego)
- Having a moment: the revolutionary semiotic of COVID-19 (Michael Flexer)
- Situating the biology of COVID-19: A Conversation on Disease and Democracy (Sabina Leonelli)
- Is a virus a distinct entity? (John Dupré)
- Consuming single-use plastics in the pandemic (Tridibesh Dey and Mike Michael)
- Something in the air: COVID-19 and the politics of pollution (Angela Cassidy and Karen Bickerstaff)
Theme: Stories and Experiences
- COVID-19 and the Loneliness Crisis (Fred Cooper)
- Beers, Burgers and Bleach: Hygiene, toilets, and hospitality in the time of COVID-19 (Charlotte Jones)
- Covid-19 has amplified student loneliness and distress (Fred Cooper and Charlotte Jones)
- Journaling student loneliness in a pandemic (Fred Cooper and Charlotte Jones)
- The Lockdown Blues (Olly Clabburn, Fred Cooper, and Charlotte Jones)
- Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19 (Luna Dolezal, Fred Cooper, Arthur Rose)
- The Plague and the Peloponnesian War (Neville Morley)
- How did people respond to pandemics in Ancient Greece, and what can we learn from this? (Neville Morley)
- The digital transformation of theatre during the pandemic (Pascale Aebischer)
- Intercorporeality and Social Distancing: Phenomenological Reflections (Luna Dolezal)
- Doing creative work with young people during lockdown (Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands)
- ‘Containment, delay, mitigation’: waiting and care in the time of a pandemic (Laura Salisbury)
- Early modern public space and pandemics (Fabrizio Nevola)
- How can we create shared understanding of our experiences of health and in isolation? (Jessie Stanier)
- Stories of everyday life in Devon and Cornwall (Sarah Cambpell)
- What does it mean for people to be made responsible for their own health during the pandemic? (Clive Barnett)
- What is it like to be in lockdown? (Ian Cook)
Theme: Health and Wellbeing
- COVID-19 and the Loneliness Crisis (Fred Cooper)
- Beers, Burgers and Bleach: Hygiene, toilets, and hospitality in the time of COVID-19 (Charlotte Jones)
- Covid-19 has amplified student loneliness and distress (Fred Cooper and Charlotte Jones)
- Journaling student loneliness in a pandemic (Fred Cooper and Charlotte Jones)
- The Lockdown Blues (Olly Clabburn, Fred Cooper, and Charlotte Jones)
- Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19 (Luna Dolezal, Fred Cooper, Arthur Rose)
- Thinking Through the Pandemic: See You Online (Lucy Osler)
- 2020 Medical Graduates: The work and wellbeing of new doctors during covid-19
- Gender inequality and COVID-19 in the UK
- Loneliness and mental health during COVID-19 (Manuela Barreto)
Theme: Care and Communities
- COVID-19 and disability (Michael Schillmeier)
- How can we combat older people’s isolation in the context of COVID-19? (Catherine Leyshon and Jen Siggs)
- How should the COVID-19 transition be managed? (Mark Jackson)
- Experiencing Loneliness (Joel Krueger, Lucy Osler, Tom Roberts)
- Having a moment: the revolutionary semiotic of COVID-19 (Michael Flexer)
- ‘Containment, delay, mitigation’: waiting and care in the time of a pandemic (Laura Salisbury)
- Historicising “containment and delay”: COVID-19, the NHS and high-risk patients (Martin Moore)
- Waiting and care in pandemic times (Laura Salisbury)
- Naming and shaming: COVID-19 and the medical professional (Luna Dolezal)
- What are the affective atmosphere of lockdown? (Gemma Lucas, Jennifer Lea and Chloe Asker)
- Re-evaluating care work during the pandemic (Felicity Thomas)
- Couple relationships during COVID-19 : Strategies for coping (Anne Barlow)
- The implications for COVID-19 of separating families (Anne Barlow)
- What can our pandemic response learn from nuclear emergencies? (Susan Molyneux-Hodgson)
- The impact of COVID-19 on university communities (Louise Lawrence)
- What does it mean to write philosophy and theory in the middle of a health crisis? (João Florêncio)
- Trauma project called in to support Christian ministers (Christopher Southgate)
- What’s the evidence on people’s coronavirus perceptions? (Sonia Oreffice and Climent Quintana-Domeque)
- (Re)Building Community-Police Relations for Resilience after Lockdown (Robin Durie and Katrina Wyatt)
Theme: Science and Data
- How do we make a pandemic visible? (David Houston Jones)
- How will the pandemic end? (Dora Vargha)
- Situating the biology of COVID-19: A Conversation on Disease and Democracy (Sabina Leonelli)
- Separating deaths caused directly by COVID infections from deaths caused by our policy response (Ginny Russell).
- How does evidence work in pandemic times? (Laura Salisbury)
- ‘Saving face’ and public health policy during COVID-19 (Luna Dolezal)
- What is the role of data modelling and data science in the pandemic? (Sabina Leonelli)
- How can historical and philosophical knowledge help us to make sense of the crisis? (Sabina Leonelli)
- How should we think about trust during the pandemic? (Sabina Leonelli)
- Is a virus a distinct entity? (John Dupré)
- How has the pandemic affected academic publishing? (Judith Green)
- Can science settle controversial policy questions? (Angela Cassidy)
- How do new diagnostic and testing technologies help to resolve infectious disease outbreaks? (Angela Cassidy)
Theme: Government and the Media
- Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19 (Luna Dolezal, Fred Cooper, Arthur Rose)
- How has public health policy in the EU been formulated in response to COVID-19? (Thibaud Deruelle)
- Historicising “containment and delay”: COVID-19, the NHS and high-risk patients (Martin Moore)
- Representations of older adults during the pandemic (Georgia Smith)
- Stigma and the logics of wartime (Luna Dolezal)
- What are the dangers of telling people to stay at home? (Des Fitzgerald)
- Europe’s recovery strategy to the COVID-19 crisis (Thibaud Deruelle)
- The pandemic and EU health policy (Thibaud Deruelle)
- The translation and dissemination of individual narratives on COVID-19 from China and Italy in the UK’s COVID-19 crisis (Ting Guo)
- What do we mean by “following the science” in the COVID-19 pandemic? (John Dupré)
- Disease, geopolitics, and militaristic rhetoric: An interdisciplinary critical analysis of the public debates on COVID-19 in the UK and USA (João Florêncio)