COVIDCalls

EP #314 - 07.27.2021 - Converge & Disaster Research w/Lori Peek, hosted by Kim Fortun

Welcome to the 314th of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Kim Fortun, standing in for COVID Calls host Scott Gabriel Knowles,  I am a cultural anthropologist who studies disaster and environmental health vulnerability.  I’m calling in from the Department of Anthropology, University of California Irvine, on the native lands of the Tongva and Acjachemen. 

Lori Peek is professor in the Department of Sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. She also directs the NSF-funded CONVERGE facility,  which is dedicated to advancing convergence research for the hazards and disaster field. She studies vulnerable populations in disaster and is author of Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11, co-editor of Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora, and co-author of Children of Katrina. 

EP #313 - 07.26.2021 -The Texas Grid Failure and the Pandemic, hosted by Kim Fortun

Welcome to the 313th of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Kim Fortun, standing in for COVID Calls host Scott Gabriel Knowles,  I am a cultural anthropoligist who studies disaster and environmental health vulnerability.  My co-hose is James Adams, a cultural anthropologist specializing in the study of energy transition.   Both of us are in the Department of Anthropology, University of California Irvine.  We’re coming to you live from there. 

Lori Peek is professor in the Department of Sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. She also directs the NSF-funded CONVERGE facility,  which is dedicated to advancing convergence research for the hazards and disaster field. She studies vulnerable populations in disaster and is author of Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11, co-editor of Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora, and co-author of Children of Katrina. 

EP #312 - 07.20.2021 - LGBTQ Community Health w/ Co-Host Eleanor Mayes

Welcome to the 312^th of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Eleanor Mayes, my pronouns are she/her. you may remember me from previously co-hosting episode 301. I currently serve as a production assistant and transcription director for COVIDCalls.  As always, host Scott Gabriel Knowles is here,

Shor Salkas (they/them) is one of the two LGBTQIA Community Liaisons to the COVID-19 Response at the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH). Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic Shor has been working with their colleagues to get as much timely and accurate information into LGBTQIA communities as possible through connecting with community members, organizations, and hosting community gatherings. Their other work at MDH is to provide coaching, training, and technical assistance to Statewide Health Improvement Program (SHIP) partners across the state of Minnesota to dig deeper and enact health equity and community engagement as core principles of their work. Shor is deeply committed to health equity and health justice as ways to create more healed and thriving communities. Beyond their work at MDH Shor has been working to support LGBTQIA communities through many projects and organizations like the Minnesota Transgender Health Coalition, Out in the Backyard, SHIFT Minnesota, the City of Minneapolis Transgender Equity Council, and through public health and health equity coalition building across Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Mattie Laidlaw (she/they) is an LGBTQ Community Liaison for the COVID-19 Response at the Minnesota Department of Health. In this role, she elevates the concerns and needs of the LGBTQ community, shares up-to-date information, and resources about all things COVID-19 with the community, and advocates for internal change at the Minnesota Department of Health to better serve LGBTQ Minnesotans.

EP #311 - 07.15.2021 - COVID-19 in Australia

Today I discuss COVID-19 in Australia with epidemiologist and global health expert Marylouise McLaws.

Marylouise McLaws is a Professor of Epidemiology, Hospital Infection and Infectious Diseases Control at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia.  

She is a member of the World Health Organization Infection Prevention and Control group for COVID-19.

EP #310 - 07.14.2021 - COVID-19 in Vietnam

Today I discuss COVID-19 and public health in Vietnam with anthropologist Martha Lincoln.

Martha Lincoln is Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at San Francisco State University. A medical and cultural anthropologist, she has commented on the social and cultural dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic frequently over the past year, including in opinion essays in Nature and The Hill. 

EP #309 - 07.13.2021 - Researchers Roundtable w/Tanya Corbin, Summer Merion, and Filip Vostel

Today is a researchers’ roundtable with Tanya Corbin, Summer Merion, and Filip Vostel.

Tanya Corbin (Ph.D. Political Science), is a disaster policy scholar and Department Chair of Security and Emergency Services at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide. Before pursuing an academic career, she worked in policy, non-profit, and business, including as a small business owner. This experience informs her academic work, where she aims to co-create knowledge with applied value to inform public policy and support practitioners through research and innovative academic program development. Her current research agenda includes a comparative project examining policy change after the 2017 hurricane season and governmental policy responses to COVID-19. She is Co-lead for the NSF CONVERGE Covid-19 Emergency Management Working Group with Dr. Samantha Montano.

Summer Marion is Incoming Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and PhD Candidate in Political Science at Northeastern University. She holds additional affiliations as a Research Fellow with the Pandemics and Borders Project, Research Associate with the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland, and Visiting Researcher with Harvard Humanitarian Initiative under the T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Summer's research focuses on global governance, international organizations, health security, and philanthropy. She is currently working on a projects examining the role of private foundations in outbreak preparedness, prevention, and response, as well as the border politics of global outbreaks. 

Filip Vostel is senior researcher at the Centre for Science, Technology, and Society Studies at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He has been working on synthesizing several streams within STS (e.g. lab studies, ANT) with social studies of time. In his current research he explores time and temporality in big science and how various time layers - and their interminglings - co-shape knowledge (and knowledge production). Currently he is writing a book investigating the multiplicity of speeds/accelerations in socio-technical domains and human lives broadly conceived (The Speed Complex: The Socio-Technical and Human Dimensions - to be published with Bristol University Press in 2023). He teaches STS at Charles University in Prague and serves as the Secretary at the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). 

EP #308 - 07.12.2021 - Technology, the Environment, and COVID

Today I welcome Clark Miller for a discussion of science, technology, globalization, and COVID.

Clark Miller is Professor and Director of the Center for Energy and Society in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University

EP #307 - 07.08.2021 - Economic Consequences of the Pandemic

Today I will discuss the economic impacts of COVID-19 with economist Micah Pollak.

Dr. Micah Pollak is an associate professor of economics and the director of the Center for Economic Education and Research in the School of Business and Economics at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana. His research interests cover a wide range of topics, including data analytics, applied microeconomics, health economics (especially in the context of Covid-19), financial economics, regional economics and more. Dr. Pollak earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois in 2011. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of microeconomics, economic history and other topics.

EP #306 - 07.07.2021 - National Sercurity & the Pandemic w/Sharon Weinberger

Today I am joined by Sharon Weinberger, national security writer and Washington Bureau Chief of Yahoo News.

Sharon Weinberger is the Washington Bureau Chief of Yahoo News and the author of The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World, published by Knopf. She has held  fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, MIT’s Knight Science Journalism program, the International Reporting Program at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She has written on military science and technology for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Financial Times, Wired magazine, Nature, BBC, Discover, and Slate, among other publications. 

EP #305 - 07.07.2021 - COVID-19 and Disability Justicein South Korea w/Hye-Young Jang

Today I am joined by Hye-yeong Jang, disability justice advocate and member of the South Korean national assembly.

Hye-yeong Jang serves currently as a national assembly member of the 21st Parliament in South Korea—she is a member of the Justice Party and serves as chairman of policy.

She is active in parliamentary politics especially working as a chief author of several pieces of legislation such as an Anti Discrimination Law, Deinstitutionalization Support Law, and a  Law for Protection of the rights of people with disabilities. Before working as an elected official in Justice Party, Jang directed a documentary film "Grown Up” in 2018 to show her younger sister’s life in the local community after leaving a residential facility for people with disabilities. She has also been running her own youtube channel "serious sister" to explore disability rights, minority issues, and feminism.  Her activities have been acknowledged by numerous awards such as the Korean Human Rights Award for People with Disabilities, the YWCA Korean Female Leader Award - Young Leader Award. Recently in February 2021, she has been nominated to TIME 100, the only Korean among the nominees.

I’d also like to acknowledge our translator today Hyunah Keum, a masters student in the Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy at KAIST—she is studying the environmental impacts of COVID.