COVIDCalls

Today I welcome Kim Tallbear, author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. Kim TallBear is a Professor in the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience, and Society. She is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. Dr. TallBear is the author of the book Native America...

Today I welcome Brianne Benness host of the No End in Sight podcast. Brianne Benness is the host of No End In Sight , a podcast about life with chronic illness, and the creator of #NEISVoid, an active community hashtag for questions and conversations about life with chronic illness across diagnosis and diagnostic status. Brianne is also a co-founder of Stories We Don’t Tell , a candid Toronto stor...

Today I welcome artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg, creator of the In America: Remember COVID memorial in Washington DC. Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg is a visual artist who has demonstrated the power of art to touch hundreds of thousands of lives. In the Fall of 2020, images of her In America: How could this happen…art installation graced over six hundred news articles on six continents, making vis...

Today I welcome Tom Ewing and Katharine Randall, authors of "How did we get here: what are droplets and aerosols and how far do they go? A historical perspective on the transmission of respiratory infectious diseases.” Tom Ewing is a professor of history and associate dean at Virginia Tech. His current research projects include studies of influenza pandemics, including the 1889-1892 Russian flu an...

Today I welcome Salonee Bhaman, a scholar whose research explores the intersections of care work, welfare policy, and social provision in the United States. Salonee Bhaman is a PhD candidate in the department of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University. Her research explores the intersections of care work, welfare policy, and social provision in the United States. Her di...

Today I welcome Dr. Vipul Shah, Medical Director, R P Shah Memorial trust against Covid 19. Vipul Shah is the Medical Director and Consultant for pediatric orthopedics, pediatric spine and scoliosis at R .P. Shah Memorial Trust for children with Disabilities in Lucknow, India.  He is Medical Director of the R P Shah Memorial trust against Covid 19.  A graduate of GSVM Medical College, Kanpur, Indi...

Today I welcome Dr. Vipul Shah, Medical Director, R P Shah Memorial trust against Covid 19. Vipul Shah is the Medical Director and Consultant for pediatric orthopedics, pediatric spine and scoliosis at R .P. Shah Memorial Trust for children with Disabilities in Lucknow, India.  He is Medical Director of the R P Shah Memorial trust against Covid 19.  A graduate of GSVM Medical College, Kanpur, Indi...

Today I welcome Elizabeth Ellcessor author of In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality, which is forthcoming in Spring 2022. Elizabeth Ellcessor is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, and a senior faculty fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs. Her research focuses on media access as a variable and uneven phenomenon t...

Teresa Tindle Akintonwa is an education specialist, patient advocacy blogger, and founder of the  Black Covid-19 Survivors Support group , an online community aimed at helping African-Americans overcome the misinformation, exclusion, and trauma of having Covid. Teresa herself contracted Covid-19 early in the pandemic back in February 2020 and has been contending with the physical and cognitive imp...

Today I welcome Jennifer Sullivan, founder of the For Those We Lost podcast. Jennifer Sullivan lives outside of Portland, Oregon. She is a part-time community college instructor and also works in social media marketing. Her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's from a Traumatic Brain Injury in 2014 and Jennifer became her mother's family caregiver and advocate. Her mother was in a memory care home...

Today is a special COVIDCalls recorded in conjunction with the 2021 Toronto International Festival of Authors.  My guests are anthropologist Katherine E. Browne & resilience expert/engineer Laurian Farrell. Let’s turn to the discussion I had with Katherine Browne and Laurian Farrell as part of the Toronto Intl. Festival of Authors.

Today I welcome writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola to COVIDCalls, she is the author of Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move. Nanjala Nyabola is a writer and researcher based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on the intersection between technology, media, and society. In addition to academic writing, she writes analysis and commentary for numerous publications a...

Today I welcome social psychologist Orla Muldoon exploring the value of social solidarity for public adherence to health messaging during COVID19. Orla Muldoon is a professor of social psychology at the University of Limerick.  She studies ways that social contexts and in particular social systems and structures can shape behaviour, attitudes and health. She regularly contribute to the new media a...

Today I welcome Science, Technology, and Society scholar Hyomin Kim to discuss COVID, science, and culture in South Korea. Hyomin Kim is an Associate Professor, School of Liberal Arts, of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology. Her research interests include the co-production of knowledge, values, identities and authority around technoscience. She has performed research projects in...

Today I welcome medical anthropologist Emma Kowal, author of Trapped in the Gap: Doing Good in Indigenous Australia. Emma Kowal is Professor of Anthropology at the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University. She is a cultural and medical anthropologist who previously worked as a medical doctor and public health researcher in Indigenous health. Her research interests lie at the intersection of ST...

Today I welcome Adam Searle and Jonathon Turnbull to COVIDCalls to talk about their work on “More than human perspectives” on the pandemic. Jonathon Turnbull is a cultural and environmental geographer from the University of Cambridge. His PhD research, funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council, concerns the return of nature to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, where he has bee...

Today I welcome medical students Mayank Jayaram & Minna Wybrecht to the program. Minna Wybrecht is a 3rd year medical student at the University of Michigan, pursuing a specialty in family medicine. She grew up in Taiwan and Michigan. Her passions include translating between English and Mandarin, providing trauma-informed care, as well as addressing health care disparities. Outside of medicine, Min...

Today I welcome pioneering HIV/AIDS & global health researcher/activist Gregg Gonsalves. My guest today! Gregg Gonsalves is an expert in policy modeling on infectious disease and substance use, as well as the intersection of public policy and health equity. His research focuses on the use of quantitative models for improving the response to epidemic diseases. For more than 30 years, he worked on H...

Virginia Hanusik is an artist whose projects explore the relationship between landscape, culture, and the built environment. Her work has been exhibited internationally, featured in The New Yorker, National Geographic, British Journal of Photography, Domus, Places Journal, The Atlantic, MAS Context, and Oxford American among others, and supported by the Pulitzer Center, Graham Foundation, and Mell...

Today I discuss the origins of COVID-19 w/Frederic Keck, author of Avian Reservoirs. Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts. Frédéric Keck is a Senior Researcher at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS). After working on the history of social anthropology and contemporary biopolitical questions raised by avian influenza, he was the head of the resea...

Dr.  George Aumoithe  is an Assistant Professor of Global Health. He earned his Ph. D. from Columbia University in 2018 and completed postdoctoral training in legal history at Princeton University in 2020. Dr. Aumoithe's research  focuses on the effect of anti-inflationary economic policy and colorblind legal ideology on public hospitals. His research interests engage problems in political economy...

Today is a researchers’ roundtable, with: Renu Singh, Jon Shaffer, and Lucia Vitale. Jon Shaffer is a Ph. D. candidate in sociology at Boston University. He is studying how global health NGOs resist dominant field pressures and develop alternative strategies in advancing state-protected universal health care access, social change, and human rights. Before starting graduate school, Jon was involved...

Today I talk about virology and COVID-19 vaccines in South Korea with Professor Soon-Young Paik.  I’m joined by translator Hyunah Keum, graduate student in STP KAIST. He currently serves as an Emeritus professor at Dept. of Microbiology in Catholic University, South Korea. In his academic training he conducted research in the Dept. of fermentation technology in Hiroshima University, Japan; He comp...

  Welcome to episode 355 of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Adia Benton and I'll be your guest host today. I am a cultural anthropologist of public health and medicine in post-conflict and “development” settings at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.  I’m coming to you live from Oakland, California. Today I...

Today I talk about technologies of COVID surveillance and control in South Korea and China with Youngrim Kim and Yuchen Chen. Youngrim Kim is a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Communication and Media at the University of Michigan, and a Rackham predoctoral fellow. She is interested in the social, cultural, and political implications of disaster information technologies in East Asia. She is c...