Covid-19 and Comedy

The cliche that ‘laughter is the best medicine’ has probably never been less apt than during a global pandemic, but human beings do often resort to humour in the most desperate of circumstances. What role ...

Covid-19 and Trust

Major destabilizing events frequently bring issues of trust sharply into focus. The current pandemic has proved no exception, stressing trust’s place (or lack thereof) in response to health guidelines, institutions, information, and even each other. ...

Covid-19 and Sport

The Pandemic and subsequent lockdown restrictions brought sport and much physical activity to a grinding halt in March 2020. Although government guidelines decreed physical activity a legitimate reason for leaving the house under lockdown, the ...

Covid and Food

Early in the pandemic, supermarket shelves in the West were stripped of produce in a wave of panic buying. But despite the unprecedented economic impact of covid-19 and the subsequent lockdowns, global food supply chains ...

Covid and Feminisms

On March 25th 2021, the Pandemic Perspectives group invited PGR Feminisms to lead a session on ‘Covid and Feminisms’. Founded by Alice Seville and Marie Allegre (PhD literature researchers University of Birmingham) and co-ran with ...

New York & The Pandemic

In March 2020, New York City was once again America’s ‘Ground Zero’, as the pandemic hit the Big Apple first and hardest of the 52 states. By mid-April the city was recording an average of ...

Protest and the Pandemic

During the pandemic, the British government passed the Coronavirus Act 2020 and the Health Protection (Coronavirus) Regulations, both of which restricted the right of assembly and therefore the right to protest. In enforcing these restrictions, ...

Covid and Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), was the head of the parliamentary communist group in Italy at the time of his arrest by Mussolini’s facist regime in 1926. Sentenced in 1928, Mussolini is reported as saying at his ...

Covid and Language

Language has changed under covid. In Britain, the Oxford English Dictionary in July 2020 added a special update to its customary quarterly updates of new words to document the impact of the pandemic on on ...