Leona Vaughn, Allen Kiconco, Nii Kwartelai Quartey, Collins Seymah Smith and Isabel Zattu Ziz COVID-19 was categorised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. The direct and indirect racialisation of COVID-19 was established early [...]
Read moreChildren in Crisis: Child Poverty and COVID-19
Basma Yaghi Newspaper headlines have had a consistent theme in the past month. UNICEF feeding British children for the first time, the free school meals fiasco that was called a “disgrace” by the Prime Minister, and the Government planning to [...]
Read moreSome hope for migrants and refugees in the time of COVID-19?
Jesse Machin Government responses to COVID-19 have come under scrutiny since the pandemic began. Stories on issues ranging from the economic impact of national lockdowns to the effectiveness of social distancing measures dominate the media. Now that the movement of people [...]
Read moreRacism as a social determinant: COVID-19 and its impacts on racial/ethnic minorities
Karim Mitha, Kaveri Qureshi, Shelina Adatia, and Hiten Dodhia As of December 21 2020, over 2.1 million individuals in the UK have tested positive for COVID-19, with approximately 76 000 deaths with the virus registered as a cause. The UK is [...]
Read moreAll for Vaccination? Vaccination for All?
Tom Douglass and Michael Calnan A COVID-19 vaccine has been held by governments since the beginning as the way to control the pandemic and return normal social and economic functioning. As a result, the news in November 2020 that an effective [...]
Read moreFrom soldiers to scapegoats: Why blaming citizens in the pandemic may help extremist parties
Mario Bisiada This article is born out of personal frustration, a feeling that, I believe, is shared by many these days. While university teaching in many European countries was resigned to being online many months ago, my university, as most in [...]
Read moreDID BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE COST LIVES? EVIDENCE-BASED POLICYMAKING DURING THE PANDEMIC
Martyn Hammersley During the pandemic, the UK Government’s policymaking has approximated more closely to the evidence-based model than in normal times. Ministers have repeatedly insisted that they are ‘following the science’ and that policies are ‘data-driven’. And, beyond the rhetoric, scientific [...]
Read moreEngaging in culture under pandemic restrictions: Where do we find culture and how do we feel about it?
Tally Katz-Gerro, Neta Yodovich, Yeala Hazut-Yenuka, and Moran Constantinescu Many feel that adjusting to new routines in our everyday life since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, and making changes in our daily habits during lockdown and restrictions of social distancing [...]
Read moreFrom Risk to Resilience in the Global Supply Chain Economy after Covid-19, a Humanitarian Response
Alva Bruun and Gyöngyi Kovács COVID-19 has come to question the very fabric of our global marketplace, in an unprecedented way. Some of the emerging challenges link to the way our societies and markets are structured and the way the supply [...]
Read moreA Day at a Time: A research agenda to grasp the everyday experience of time in the COVID-19 pandemic
Simon Bailey, Michelle Bastian, Rebecca Coleman, Emily Grabham, Dawn Lyon & Dean Pierides COVID-19 has changed time as we know it, in ways that are both prosaic and extraordinary. During the period of national lockdown in the UK, rapidly reassembled [...]
Read moreCovid-19 Public Health Messages and Minority Ethnic Older People in Scotland
Shruti Chaudhry Although ethnic coding within Scotland's health information systems has been consistently identified as a key priority in tackling health inequalities, Scotland was late in collecting data on Covid outcomes by ethnicity. Public Health Scotland first made such information available [...]
Read moreWhat the recent exam fiasco has taught us about why government needs to trust teachers
Jacqueline Baxter 2020 has been an exceptionally difficult year for all sectors of the public services in England, and the education sector has not escaped unscathed. The recent furore over exam results has caused immense angst and uncertainty, for students, parents [...]
Read moreRe-imagining the UK’s local industrial strategy after the Coronavirus pandemic
Sherif Youssef In his poem mourning Shelley, Byron said: “Nothing has happened, he has only undergone a sea change”. In a recent interview, the UK prime minister mentioned that the Coronavirus has been a disaster for the UK. Indeed it has; with [...]
Read moreMissing Voices and New Connections: Online Community Choir Singing during COVID 19
Emily Falconer I click on the ‘join meeting’ button, and I’m met with a screen full of squares. Tiny moving faces smile, squint, some too dark to make out. The faces are drinking tea, shooing away cats, adjusting their chairs. [...]
Read morePostponing migrant destitution? Why we need to call for more than a suspension of No Recourse to Public Funds
Eve Dickson and Rachel Rosen As the Covid-19 pandemic has generalised insecurity and exacerbated poverty, there have been increased calls for migrants ‘subject to immigration control’ to be able to access welfare support for their own well-being and because of public [...]
Read moreViolence in the Time of COVID: Dispatches from the Caribbean
Johannah-Rae Reyes and Levi Gahman Across the Anglo-Caribbean, recurrent machinations of state violence and police brutality persist. Institutionalised attacks on negatively-racialised, resource-poor, and politically-active groups correlate with the discomfiting reality that states in the region are purportedly postcolonial nations retaining Westminster-modelled [...]
Read morePrecarity, Precarious Work and Covid-19: Insights from Nottingham
Tom Vickers and Sharon Hutchings The Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent economic disruption have had uneven impacts across the population. In Britain, as in many other countries, they have exposed and intensified longstanding systemic inequalities and insecurities. The UK Office for [...]
Read moreFrom Exotic to ‘Dirty’: How the Pandemic has Re-Colonised Leicester
Bal Sokhi-Bulley I have always known it as Melton Road. The street sign says Belgrave Road. And the brown and white tourist attraction sign says ‘Golden Mile’. These street names feel metaphoric for how we see, or at least saw, Leicester. [...]
Read moreThe Whiteness of Public Space
Tom Trevatt When Edward Colston’s statue was toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters in June 2020 there was both praise and condemnation from both sides of the political spectrum. One of the strangest images that emerged was of Piers Morgan praising [...]
Read moreTemporary encounters, perpetual struggles: Covid19, train journeys and migrant labourers in India
Manish Maskara As an immediate result of Covid19 lockdown in India starting 24th March 2020, migrant labourers, who were otherwise invisible became visible to the public eye. With the lockdown, the operation of trains was banned. One could say, it was [...]
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