Dogus Simsek “We might not die due to the virus, but we might lose our lives from hunger, poverty, lack of access to medicines and hostile environment. Most of us feel the fear, desperation, stress, anger and anxiety.” An undocumented migrant [...]

Eva Illouz This article was first published in Le Nouvel Observateur and Sueddeutsche Zeitung 23/03/2020 and in Haartz ‘Weekend’ 02/04/2020 In Lars von Trier’s movie Melancholia, the spectator comes to slowly grasp, with a mix of terror and powerlessness, that the world [...]

Nicola De Martini Ugolotti In a recent interview, the virologist Ilaria Capua argued that epidemics are social rather than merely biological phenomena, and stated that "without a doubt we will carry the scars of this on our consciousness, more than in [...]

James Flexner I am an archaeologist who studies the long-term histories of small island societies in the Pacific region, with most of my recent fieldwork focused in Vanuatu and Tasmania. I also do a lot of critical thinking and writing about [...]

Aidan O’Sullivan On the 26th of March and again on the 2nd of April across the nation, millions in the UK collectively came out of their houses and simultaneously applauded the care workers and staff of the NHS for their continued [...]

Mark Carrigan In common with over a third of the world’s population, I have spent the last week confined to my home after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced long-anticipated lockdown measures in which anyone who could work from home was [...]

En-Chieh Chao I call this pandemic a plague but not COVID-19 or any other names that aims to politicize it or de-politicize it. Although, in the end, it is all political one way or the other. For me, the imagery of [...]

Achala Gupta and Katie Chadd Amidst the rapidly growing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, many hidden realities of our everyday lives have become apparent. Situated in the Corona-era, this piece focuses on the sequential processes of understanding, adjusting and coping with [...]

Lisa Tilley In recent weeks, the critical response to right-wing readings of desirable action or inaction in the context of COVID-19 has repeatedly been framed on social media in terms of eugenics. In some ways, the identification of eugenic pandemic discourse [...]

Chris Griffin Self-isolation and physical distancing have quickly generated new norms of social responsibility. Public discourse is increasingly dominated by morally-loaded statements of civic duty: everyone must stay at home, wash their hands, and only buy what they need. People who [...]

Nirmal Maraj and Dylan Kerrigan “Racial capitalism” is a brutal socio-economic system. Regionally across the small islands nations and countries of the Caribbean the scars of this system are everywhere. They include the collision of colonialism and capitalism and the legacies [...]

Olivia Arigho-Stiles Covid-19 has arrived in Bolivia, one of Latin America’s poorest countries, exacerbating a deepening political crisis and structural economic fragility. In common with many other countries in Latin America, the lack of widespread health infrastructure, low investment in healthcare as [...]

Reiner Grundmann In an attempt to control the effects of the epidemic in the UK, the government has embarked on a strategy to control the narrative of the Covid-19 tragedy. This has led to a health emergency and there are signs [...]

Nick Stevenson Recently I have been writing a historical article about George Orwell. While doing so I have come across a lot of material about how the world he envisaged hasn’t arrived, and that his predictions were misplaced. It is also [...]

John Holmwood The UK Government’s response to Covid-19 has elicited bafflement on the part of many commentators. It is now widely agreed that the government set off on the wrong foot with a strategy that seriously misjudged the risks of the [...]

Ipek Demir It is no longer a secret. The West, on the whole, has underestimated the coronavirus – covid-19. It is not just Ursula Von der Leyen, the President of the EU Commission who admitted this.  According to Dr Tedros Adhanom [...]

Mark Simpson The Chancellor of the Exchequer describes the UK Government’s package of support for individuals, businesses and the economy, unveiled in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as “unprecedented in the history of the British state.” There may be some truth [...]

Lisa Arai The emergence of the novel coronavirus strain, Covid-19, has been understood primarily as a medical and public health phenomenon, but it is also a geographic one. Measures to suppress the virus have necessitated a near total inversion of people’s [...]

Asiya Islam A message with email signoffs adapted for use during the coronavirus pandemic has been doing the rounds, one of the many memes that this crisis has generated. The usual ‘Best’, ‘Sent from my iPhone’, and ‘Take care’ have been [...]

Nabeela Ahmed and Priya Deshingkar India announced a national lockdown for 21 days to control the spread of Covid-19 in the world’s second most populous country, on the 24th of March. While the government declared the protective measures involve ‘simply having [...]