Sophie Harman It couldn’t happen here. A one-off event, at first as big as the 2008 financial crisis, and then equal to if not bigger than the end of the Second World War. Unique in its reach, impact, and cause. Locking [...]

Jennifer Fleetwood, John Lea, Svenja Bromberg and Theo Kindynis “Provisional data from police shows a fall in overall crime, during this coronavirus outbreak. Car crime, burglary and shoplifting are all lower than the same time last year”, stated Priti Patel, Home [...]

Ishupal Singh Kang “New vaccines for a safer world”, declares the homepage of The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI, in short). This aptly named international body, based on several accounts (here and here), is seemingly the omphalos of the vaccine [...]

Camilla Lewis, Chris Phillipson, Tine Buffel, Patty Doran and Sophie Yarker Older people have borne the brunt of deaths from Covid-19, whether in hospital or in care homes. At the same time, the coronavirus emergency sits alongside a crisis in [...]

Linnea Renton and Leona Vaughn The world is watching as the COVID-19 pandemic acts as a relentless revealer of existing social fractures and inequalities. Amongst the disparities thrown into sharp relief is how the research relationship between the Global North and [...]

Alice Butler-Warke and Caroline Hood Low-waged migrant workers hold together life and services in social, domestic and economic spheres. Their bodies are the labouring forces that build glistening office buildings, harvest the seasonal fruit and vegetables we enjoy, and care for [...]

Jennifer Whillans, Jessica Paddock and Alan Warde We are told that nothing is normal, that ‘Lockdown’ has overturned life as we know it. However, beyond the apocalyptic narrative there is much speculation about what might become the ‘new normal’. One of [...]

David Wright The closure of galleries, theatres, cinemas and music venues through the Covid-19 crisis has placed a significant part of the UK’s cultural economy in peril. It has also been something of a boon to other parts of this economy, [...]

Adil Hossain Last year in December when the Indian government passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (or CAA) in Parliament and proposed a pan-Indian National Register of Citizens (NRC) it fundamentally changed the character of citizenship for Indian Muslims. Where the [...]

Dylan Kneale, Laia Bécares, Harri Weeks These are definitely not normal times. The coronavirus pandemic is raging across the world, with some glimmers of respite only now emerging, as the ‘curve’ appears to be flattening and restrictions are being slowly eased [...]

Analía Inés Meo On the 20th March 2020, the government of Argentina announced compulsory social isolation across the country for just two weeks. Forty-two days after that decision, the confinement continues to affect the majority of the population in urban [...]

Patricia Lorenzoni In March of this year, in the solitariness of a Rio apartment during lockdown, philosopher Marcia Cavalcante Schuback gave a lecture entitled “On the isolation of the world”, in collaboration with the YouTube channel Bazar do Tempo. What does [...]

James Trafford  As Britain prepared for lockdown amidst a discourse underpinned by militarised nationalism, we witnessed calls for hugely expanded police powers from across the political spectrum. This desire for increased policing was backed-up with police hotlines and “snooper” forms overwhelmed [...]

Raheel Mohammed In ‘normal times’, the state sanctioned racism that exists in prisons has meant black and brown people’s basic rights have been denied. In a state of emergency, a denial of these rights cannot be condoned as the danger of [...]

Carli Rowell Much has been written about the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic upon various facets of everyday social life and of the inequalities that it is exacerbating. Lay, media and political discourse has been slow to challenge the narrative [...]

David Clark TS Eliot’s chilling start to The Waste Land has deep resonance in the time of COVID-19. We seem to be exactly in that instant when ‘the dead tree gives no shelter’, when ‘I was neither living nor dead’, and [...]

Anni Kangas and Zarnigor Omonillaeva About one thousand Central Asian citizens were stranded at Moscow’s international airports, in mid-March, as states began closing their borders to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Airlines reacted by cancelling flights and large groups [...]

Matt Woodhead ‘Don’t stay hidden, you don’t have to do it alone’ There are an estimated 700,000 young people in the UK who are providing full time care to adult relatives during the Coronavirus lockdown. A young carer is someone aged 17 [...]

Sophia Woodman International media coverage of China’s coronavirus lockdown has frequently characterized its effectiveness in combatting the spread of the disease as due to the overweening powers at the disposal of an authoritarian state. But local social mobilization may have been [...]

Matt Barlow In Argentina, the economic and social lockdown as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic was implemented with speed and a concise directive; to remain indoors. Strict quarantine measures for international arrivals preceded a complete border closure. The shutdown [...]