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

This episode of The Conversation’s In Depth Out Loud podcast, features the work of Professor David Vincent, historian at the OU. He has spent the last few years looking into how people in the past managed to balance community ties and solitary behaviours

Dr Cora Beth Knowles is a Classics Associate Lecturer at the OU and founder of the Classical Studies Support website. In this article, she discusses her popular new series 'Comfort Classics', which is helping to provide solace for those during lockdown

Patrick Wright teaches Literature and Creative Writing at the OU and is currently working on a PhD; a poetry collection called Cold Dark Matter. In this piece, Patrick shares his experience of studying for a PhD during lockdown while also grieving the loss of a partner

Dr Rosemary Golding is a Staff Tutor and Senior Lecturer in Music at the OU. In this blog, she discusses the role that music has played in society's adjustment to lockdown, linking with her own research, into the use of music in nineteenth-century lunatic asylums

In a series by the OU and Institute of English Studies, Professor Sara Haslam highlights the literature of Mary Ward and Rebecca Solnit, two authors who 'simultaneously appreciate the basic connectedness between members of this human race'