COVIDCalls

EP #184 - 12.09.2020 - Science Journalism in the Pandemic with Laura Helmuth

Today we have a discussion of science journalism in the pandemic with Laura Helmuth, editor in chief of Scientific American magazine.

Laura Helmuth is the Editor in Chief of Scientific American. She has previously been an editor for The Washington Post, National Geographic, Slate, Smithsonian, and Science’s news section. She serves on the boards of High Country News, Spectrum and SciLine and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s standing committee on the science of science communication. She is a past president of the National Association of Science Writers.

EP #183 - 12.08.2020 - Scandinavia in the Pandemic

Today we have a DISCUSSION OF SCANDINAVIA IN THE PANDEMIC with Leonoor Borgesius, Erik Isberg, Nalan Azak, Emil Flato.  First—it’s Lori Peek.

Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center, UC Boulder.

Nalan Azak is a medical anthropologist pursuing a PhD at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at the University of Oslo. Her research explores the local infrastructure and use of antibiotics in Turkey in light of the current antimicrobial resistance (AMR) problem by drawing on discourses of medical anthropology and the history of public health in Turkey.

Erik Isberg is a PhD Candidate in the Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.  He is currently working on a thesis on the history of postwar paleoclimatology and the making of Anthropocene temporalities. This spring, Erik wrote about the times of knowledge production during the pandemic for the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Emil Flatø is a ph.d. candidate at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages in Oslo. His research concerns the interdisciplinary, transatlantic network of managers, scientists and bureaucrats that spawned the traditions for making claims about society and climate's entwined futures. This history of risk management is relevant to the sorts of knowledge politics that have been playing out around the Covid-19 pandemic, especially concerning the shared emphasis on modeled knowledge. Previously, Flatø was a staff writer at Morgenbladet, a Norwegian weekly of arts, science and politics.

Leonoor Borgesius is an Environmental Historian, doing a PhD in cultural history at the University of Oslo. She was also a guest researcher at the Division for the History of Science, Technology and Environment at KTH in Stockholm. She writes the history of the imagining, planning, and construction of infrastructural works in the Netherlands and colonial Suriname. She is specifically interested in how these structures invite environmental knowledge production and distribution and carry imaginaries of progress and modernity.

EP #182 - 12.07.2020 - Weddings in the Time of COVID-192.

Today we discuss weddings, parties, and social life in the pandemic with journalist Alyson Krueger.

Alyson Krueger is a freelance journalist in NYC and mostly writes for NYT covering lifestyle and culture.

EP #181 - 12.04.2020 - Metropoli and COVID-19

Today we have a visit from Philadelphia sanitation worker and essential worker advocate Terrill Haigler, also known as Ya Fav Trashman.  Then I will talk to Shlomo Angel, Roger Keil, and Xuefei Ren about the importance of metropolitan regions in the response to COVID-19.

Roger Keil is a Professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Suburban Planet (Polity 2018), co-editor, with Judy Branfman of Public Los Angeles: A Private City's Activist Futures (UGAPress 2020), with Xuefei Ren, of The Globalizing Cities Reader (Routledge 2017) and with K. Murat Güney and Murat Üçoğlu of Massive Suburbanization (UTP 2019). Keil is doing ongoing comparative work with colleagues locally and internationally on the relationship of the COVID-19 pandemic and cities. 

Shlomo (Solly) Angel is a Professor of City Planning and the Director of the Urban Expansion Program at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at New York University. He is the author of Planet of Cities (2012) and Housing Policy Matters (2000), the leading author of the Atlas of Urban Expansion—2016 Edition, and co-author of A Pattern Language (1977). Since 2012, he led teams assisting intermediate cities in Colombia and Ethiopia in preparing for their rapid expansion.

EP #180 - 12.03.2020 - The Monument Lab and COVID-19

Today we have a discussion of memorials with Paul Farber of the Monument Lab.

Farber's research and curatorial projects explore transnational urban history, cultural memory, and creative approaches to civic engagement. He is the author of A Wall of Our Own: An American History of the Berlin Wall (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) which tells the untold story of a group of American artists and writers who found refuge along the Berlin Wall and in Cold War Germany in order to confront political divisions back home in the United States. He is also the co-editor with Ken Lum of Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia (Temple University Press, 2019), a public art and history handbook designed to generate new critical ways of thinking about and building monuments. He previously served as the inaugural Scholar in Residence for Mural Arts Philadelphia. His work on culture has also previously appeared in The Guardian, Museums & Social Issues, Diplomatic History, Art & the Public Sphere, Vibe, and on NPR. 

EP #179 - 12.02.2020 - COVID-19 in Rural America

Today we have a discussion of the pandemic in rural America with political scientist Keith Mueller.

Keith J. Mueller, Ph.D., is Gerhard Hartman Professor and head of the Department of Health Management and Policy, University of Iowa. He is also the Director of the Rural Policy Research Institute Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis and Chair of the RUPRI Health Panel. He has served as President of the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) and as a member of the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services. He has also served on national advisory committees to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In 2016, he received the University of Iowa Regents Award for Faculty Excellence.

EP #178 - 12.01.2020 - The COVID-19 Organizational Crisis in France

Today we have a discussion of THE COVID-19 ORGANIZATIONAL CRISIS IN FRANCE with Olivier Borraz and Ptrick Castel.

Olivier Borraz is a CNRS research professor at Sciences Po in Paris. He is the director of the Center for the Sociology of Organisations (CSO), a leading research center in sociology in France. His work focuses on risk governance and more recently emergency preparedness. He has published several papers on simulation exercises in the French nuclear sector and is currently working on volcano alerts in the French Antilles. 

Patrick Castel is a FNSP research professor, also at Sciences Po and the CSO. He is interested in health policies in general, and the organisation of research in cancer treatments. His research sits at the crossroads of the sociologies of organisations, decision and professions.

EP #177 - 11.30.2020 - Denial, Democracy and Witnessing in the Age of COVID-19

Today we have a discussion of DENIAL, DEMOCRACY, AND WITNESSING IN THE AGE OF COVID-19 AND CLIMATE CHANGE with political scientist Nancy Rosenblum.

Nancy Rosenblum is the Harvard University Senator Joseph Clark Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government emerita. Her field of research is historical and contemporary political thought. Her book Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America was published by Princeton University Press in 2016. On the Side of the Angels: An Appreciation of Parties and Partisanship received the Walter Channing Cabot Fellow Award from Harvard in 2010 for scholarly eminence. She is the author, among other books, of Membership and Morals: The Personal Uses of Pluralism in America (1998), which was awarded the APSA David Easton Prize in 2000. She is editor of Thoreau: Political Writings, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. Prof. Rosenblum is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. She is Co-Editor of the Annual Review of Political Science.

EP #176 - 11.25.2020 - Memorial Episode #2

Today we have a memorial session to remember those lost needlessly to the pandemic, with Pamela Addison, Rafe Offer, Cecile Stehrenberger, and Lori Peek.

EP# 175 - 11.24.2020 - COVID-19 and the Technology of Response in Asia

Today we have a discussion of COVID-19 & the technology of response in Asia with Yeonsil Kang and Hallam Stevens.

Yeonsil Kang is a currently a visiting assistant professor at Drexel University’s history department. She is interested in understanding the intersections of the environment, science/technology, and disasters especially in East Asia. She is working on a project, Mineral Time, Bodily Time: Asbestos, Slow Disaster, and Toxic Politics in South Korea which explores the history and politics of asbestos, the environmental hazard that shaped environmental health policies in South Korea.

Hallam Stevens is an associate professor of history at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His work focuses on the history of technology, particularly in the domains of the life sciences and information technology. He is the author of Life out of Sequence: a data-driven history of bioinformatics (Chicago, 2013) and Biotechnology and society: an introduction (Chicago, 2016) and the co-editor of Postgenomics: Perspectives on biology after the genome (Duke, 2015). Currently the head of history programme at NTU, Hallam also holds appointments as the Associate Chair for Research in the School of Humanities and the Associate Director of the NTU Institute of Science and Technology for Humanity (NISTH).