Covid-19

Dr Kathryn Medièn, OU Lecturer in Sociology, shares an interview she conducted with the authors of a recent report published by Patients Not Passports, a campaign which seeks to challenge the imposition of border controls within UK healthcare institutions

A project led by Marie Gillespie, Professor of Sociology, is exploring what it is like to be an asylum seeker, a refugee or an undocumented person under lockdown. Find out about the COVID-19 Chronicles from the Margins project 

Dr Aditya Ray, a Research Fellow in Geography at The Open University, speaks to Dr Amit Basole, Associate Professor of Economics at Azeem Premji University in India, about India's employment and migration crisis in the wake of the pandemic

Dr Sandip Hazareesingh, a History Research Fellow at The Open University, explores his first encounter with Albert Camus’ classic La Peste as a student in Mauritius and observes the novel's parallels with the current pandemic

Dr Naomi Barker, Senior Lecturer in Music at The Open University, highlights the extraordinary parallels between how music is being used during the current pandemic and how it was used during the Italian plagues of the 14th and 16th centuries

Steve Tombs marks the third anniversary of the fire at Grenfell Tower which killed 72 people and changed forever the lives of many more; he does so through the lens of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the renewed critical attention to manifestations of structural racism

The team behind the HERA-funded European project, Moving Market Places, has produced a film exploring the impacts of COVID-19 on public marketplaces in a range of European countries and reflect on what these spaces may look like after the pandemic

Members of the Innovation for Cancer Care in Africa project team, Professor Smita Srinivas and Pritika Rao, highlight the importance of interdisciplinary cohesion in the response to COVID-19. Published by the Innogen Institute

Dr Shafquat Towheed, Senior Lecturer in English at The Open University, discusses the role that reading is playing in helping us to navigate lockdown and reminds us how 'the well-curated bookcase has become a manifestation of our mental state'

In this article by Dr Edmund King, Lecturer in English at the OU, the concept of 'Doomscrolling' is explored - absorbing excessive, negative news via our digital devices - and highlights how our reading habits are changing to manage pandemic-induced anxieties