COVIDCalls

Welcome to the 353rd episode of the COVID Calls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Esther Chernak, and I am your guest host on this session of COVID Calls. I teach at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health, where I oversee the Center for Public Health Readiness and Communication. I am an infectious disease physicia...

Today we will talk with Graham Mooney and Christos Lynteris. Christos Lynteris is a medical anthropologist, and senior lecture at the Univ. of St. Andrews in the UK. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics, zoonosis, epidemiological epistemology, medical visual culture, colonial medicine, and epidemics as events posing an existential risk to humanity. Dr...

Today I talk about mass death as everyday life with legal historian Mary Dudziak.  Mary Dudziak is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University. Her most recent book is War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2012). Her current book project argues that the culture of war death in the U.S. helps explain the decline of political restraints on the war...

Today I talk about public health for transgender people and COVID-19 in India with Dr. Aqsa Shaik. Dr. Aqsa Shaikh (She/Her) is an out and proud trans woman. She is Associate professor of Community Medicine, Nodal Officer for Covid Vaccination Centre, Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and Research. Aqsa is one of the investigators in Clinical trial of Sputnik V, investigator in TransCare Proje...

Today I talk about disaster research and emergency management in the COVID era with disaster expert Dave Neal.  David M. Neal, Ph. D., recently retired as Professor Emeritus in Fire and Emergency Management from Oklahoma State University and is now a Visiting Scholar and Affiliated Scholar with Indiana University South Bend, and an Affiliated Researcher with the Risk and Crisis Research Centre at...

Today I talk about environmental history and activism during the COVID pandemic with Andrea Gaynor, Katie Holmes, and Ruth Morgan. Prof Andrea Gaynor is an environmental historian and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Western Australia, where she is researching histories of urban wild nature. She is vice-president of the European Society for Environmental History and a convenor of the Beeliar...

Today I talk about COVID and COVID vaccination in North Korea with my guests Kee Park, C. Yoonhee Ryder, and Nagi Shafik. Dr. Nagi M. Shafik is a medical doctor with postgraduate degree in Public Health working as a researcher with the Korea Health Policy Project at Harvard Medical School. He has more than 35 years’ experience in both clinical and public health in Egypt, Algeria, Yemen, Cambodia,...

Today I talk with Geoffrey Hughes and Tridibesh Dey about legal regimes under pandemic conditions—especially in Jordan and India. Tridibesh Dey is a final-year PhD candidate in the Anthropology of Science and Technology at the University of Exeter. His broader research themes involve plastics, process, technologies of plastic waste management, and infrastructures. His thesis, due for submission th...

Today I talk about the US presidency, COVID, and the history of pandemics with presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky. Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University, and the Kundrun Open-Rank Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, and a Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs at Geo...

Today I talk with artist Yiyun Kang about her project Anthropause, and her process of making and showing art in the middle of the pandemic. Yiyun Kang received her BFA in painting from Seoul National University, MFA from UCLA’s Design & Media Arts, and PhD from Royal College of Art, UK. She held exhibitions at numerous art institutions including the Seoul Museum of Art, Taipei MOCA, Victoria and A...

Today I welcome Rosalind Williams to the program to discuss her latest article Crisis: The Emergence of Another Hazardous Concept. Rosalind Williams taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1982 to her retirement in 2018. In 2001 she joined MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, serving as program head from 2002-06. Her main scholarly affiliation is the Society for the...

Today I welcome sociologist of risk and the environment Dana Fisher. Dana R. Fisher is a Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on questions related to democracy, activism, and climate politics.  Recent projects include a study of responses to climate change by political elites in the US, the emergence of the Civilian Climate Corps, and activism a...

Today I welcome Peter Poullos to discuss doctors with disabilities in COVID times. Dr. Peter Poullos is Clinical Associate Professor of Radiology and Gastroenterology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2003, as a G.I. fellow at UC San Francisco, he suffered a spinal cord injury and subsequently re-trained in radiology.  His specialty is body imaging, focusing on CT, MRI, and ultraso...

Today I welcome teachers Rebecca Martinson and Angela Minor back to COVIDCalls to talk about COVID and the return to school.  Rebecca Martinson is a nurse teaching intro to nursing and Anateomy and Physiology to high school students for 10 years-  it is her 11th year teaching. She wrote an oped for the New York Times last summer critical of the planning going into covid safety related to schools....

Today I talk with historians Alex Jania and Kristina Buhrman about COVID and disaster memory in East Asia. Kristina Buhrman is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. Her research focuses on the history of knowledge in and about premodern Japan, covering topics from divination and astrology to disasters. She has been a member of the Teach 3.11 co...

Today I talk with anthropologist Peter Redfield, author of Life in Crisis, the Ethical Journey of Doctors Without Borders. Peter Redfield is Professor of Anthropology and Erburu Chair in Ethics, Globalization and Development at the University of Southern California.  Trained as a cultural anthropologist sympathetic to history, he concentrates on circulations of science, technology and medicine in...

Welcome to episode 335 of COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Kristin Urquiza, and I’m guest hosting for the day. I am the co-founder and co-executive director of Marked By COVID, which is a national, grassroots-powered, non-partisan nonprofit organization that promotes accountability, recognition, justice, and a pandemi...

Today I talk with Esther Liberman Cuenca about teaching medieval history in the COVID Era. Esther Liberman Cuenca is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Houston-Victoria, in Victoria, TX. She teaches courses in World, European, American, and Medieval History, and has published widely on pedagogy. She recently edited a special cluster of essays for the journal EuropeNow, which is...

Today I talk with disability activist and scholar Ashley Shew, professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Ashley Shew is an associate professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech. Her current work, as part of a National Science Foundation CAREER grant, examines narratives disabled people share about technology, that are often different from dominant ways of t...

Today I talk with Cecilia Tomori about maternal and children’s health in the midst of the pandemic. Cecília Tomori is Associate Professor and Director of Global Public Health and Community Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, with a joint appointment at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is a Hungarian-American anthropologist and public health scholar whose work add...

Today I talk with Heewon Kim and Sungeun Kim about South Korea and air quality in the COVID Era. Sungeun Kim is a PhD candidate at the graduate school of science and technology policy in KAIST. His research interest focuses on the relationship between environmental knowledge, nation-states, and spatial order in East Asia. His dissertation project examines the role of environmental sciences in the...

Alma C. Stewart is the Founder and President of the Louisiana Center for Health Equity. Throughout her career, Alma has testified during countless legislative hearings, spearheaded numerous advocacy campaigns, and addressed social and political determinants of health in a manner that boldly places the needs of disparate populations at the forefront of Louisiana's political and social agenda. Alma'...