COVIDCalls

Today, a discussion of COVID-19 Louisiana. Dr. Adrienne Katner is an Assistant Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center School of Public Health in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her research focuses on evaluating the efficacy of regulatory and environmental interventions in reducing exposures to chemical and microbial contaminants. H...

Today, a discussion of COVID-19 in Haiti and the Caribbean with Franciscka Lucien and Mimi Sheller. FRANCISCKA LUCIEN joined the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti as Executive Director in July 2019. She is a committed advocate for social justice, and an experienced international development professional skilled in strategic management, fundraising, communications and advocacy. Her work...

Today, in a continuation of my discussion from last week on COVID-19, nuclear violence, and radiation I talk with psychiatrist and author Robert Jay Lifton. Robert Jay Lifton graduated from New York Medical College in 1948. Dr. Lifton is credited with helping to establish a new field in medicine called psychohistory, the field of inquiry that explores the psychological motives of individuals and g...

Today, I talk about COVID-19 and hurricane evacuation and sheltering with Joshua Behr, Elizabeth Dunn, Jennifer Marshall and Wie Yusuf. Joshua G. Behr PhD is Research Associate Professor at the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) at Old Dominion University. Dr. Behr conducts studies, performs modeling, and publishes insights related to community resilience, catastrophic event...

Today, I talk about COVID-19, the government response and the future of democracy with Nils Gilman of the Berggruen Institute. Dr. Nils Gilman is the Vice President of Programs at the Berggruen Institute, in which capacity he leads the Institute’s research program, directs its resident fellowship program, and is also Deputy Editor of Noema Magazine. He has previously worked as Associate Chancellor...

​Fallon Samuels Aidoo is the Jean Brainard Boebel Professor of Historic Preservation, and is affiliated with the University of New Orleans’s (UNO) Department of Planning and Urban Studies as well as its Urban Entrepreneurship and Policy Institute. ​

Today, I talk about Indigenous communities and COVID-19 in Chile with Manuel Tironi and Sarah Kelly.   Sarah Kelly is a cultural geographer and postdoctoral researcher affiliated with CIGIDEN (Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management) and Dartmouth College. Her work addresses water, climate change, and disaster studies through community-based participatory research and mapmaking, pr...

Today, I talk about the big questions of social science research with Alexa Dietrich of the SSRC!   Alexa S. Dietrich is program director for the SSRCouncil’s Transregional Collaboratory on the Indian Ocean, the Scholarly Borderlands initiative, and codirector of the Program on Religion and the Public Sphere. And assoc prof anthropology wagner college. She is trained in medical anthropology and ep...

Today, I talk about choreography, dance, creativity and the pandemic with David Brick and Ishmael Houston-Jones.   David Brick co-founded Philadelphia’s Headlong Dance Theater with Amy Smith and Andrew Simonet in 1993. Over the next two decades, these three co-founders created over forty dances as Headlong, performing nationally and internationally. In 2008, David co-founded the Headlong Performan...

Today, I talk about homelessness and the pandemic with Carl Falconer and Dawn Gilman.   Carl Falconer, a native of South Dakota, is an eight-year U.S. Army veteran. He holds a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology and a Master's Degree in Public Administration from the University of North Florida. Falconer has worked with persons experiencing homelessness and mental illness in the Jacksonville, Florida...

Today, I talk about infrastructure, justice and the pandemic with Marccus D. Hendricks UMD   Marccus D. Hendricks is an assistant professor of urban studies and planning in the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and a faculty affiliate with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland....

Today, I talk to four rising researchers who bring science, technology, and society analysis to bear on COVID-19.  Tim Schutz, Prerna Srigyan, Maka Suarez, and Pedro de la Torre III.   Pedro de la Torre III is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), and an Adjunct Instructor in the Humanities Department at the New Jersey Inst...

Today, I talk with Denice Ross and Allison Plyer.   Denice Ross is a Director at the National Conference on Citizenship and a Fellow at Georgetown’s Beeck Center. Her recent focus is on data quality and the 2020 Census and she also provides strategic support for the State Chief Data Officer Network. Denice comes to this work from New America, where she studied the power of networks to advance prog...

Today, I talk with Jer Thorp and Yanni Loukissas about Mapping and COVID-19.   Yanni Alexander Loukissas is Associate Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech, where he directs the Local Data Design Lab. His new book, All Data Are Local: Thinking Critically in a Data-Driven Society (MIT Press, 2019), is addressed to a growing audience of prac...

Today, I talk COVID-19 in the UK with Jose Torero.   Professor José L. Torero is Professor Civil Engineering and Head of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London. He works in the fields of fire safety, combustion, environmental remediation and sanitation where he specializes in complex environments such as developing nations, complex urban enviro...

Today, I talk about the language we use to discuss disaster and why it matters with Disasters Deconstructed podcast co-hosts Ksenia Chmutina and Jason von Meding.   Dr Jason von Meding is an Associate Professor at the University of Florida and a founding faculty member of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). Before moving to the U.S. he spent 6 years at the University of...

Today, I am excited to have the second of my discussions about racial justice and disaster research with Bill Anderson Fund Fellows - my guests are Nancy Contreras and Antoine Richards.   Nancy Contreras is a Ph. D. candidate in Criminology at the University of Delaware. She is a Bill Anderson Fund Fellow and an affiliate of the Disaster Research Center. Her dissertation explores international tra...

Today, my guest is Scott Miles research scientist in the Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at University of Washington and Director of the Impact360 Alliance initiative.   Dr. Scott Miles is a disaster scientist and consultant with expertise in disaster risk reduction, long-term recovery, community resilience, reconnaissance, simulation modeling, information systems, and human-ce...

Today, we have a public health update and then a discussion about the health, well- being, and resilience of first responders and essential workers with Chelsea LeNoble.

Today, we have a discussion of Sweden in the COVID-19 pandemic with historian of technology and science Johan Gardebo. Johan Gärdebo holds a Phd in history of science, technology and environment from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. He is just about to start a postdoctoral fellowship at Linköping University, researching Swedish carbon dependence and populism. Johan’s research focus...

Today, we have a discussion of fiction and writing in the COVID-19 pandemic with Malka Older and Malka’s brother Daniel Jose Older. Daniel José Older is the New York Times bestselling author of the Middle Grade historical fantasy series Dactyl Hill Squad, the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, Star Wars: Last Shot, The Book of Lost Saints, and the award winning Young Adult series the Shadowsh...