• Epidemics: A View from Italy

    Italy’s first two cases of the coronavirus pandemic were confirmed on 30 January 2020 by the Istituto Spallanzani which specializes in infectious diseases, the first research centre in Europe in fact to isolate the genomic sequence of COVID-19. The patients were a couple of Chinese tourists, both of whom had recovered by 26 February. Just…

  • Covid-19: An Opportunity for Nature and Outdoor Education

    Since March headline stories have abounded across news outlets suggesting the positive impact that the decline in human activity, as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown, is having upon the natural world. The National Geographic (April 2020) reported ‘carbon omissions are crashing’ and forecast a  9% drop in Europe this year, elsewhere observations were recorded…

  • Emerging from Lockdown: Shared Experience as we (re)commune together

    Since late March we have been separated from those whom we love, our friends and even our business acquaintances. We stand two metres apart in our shopping queues. We see poignant, yet often painful, pictures on our televisions of grandparents with spread hands on panes of glass trying to ‘meet’ their grandchildren. On our daily…

  • Everyday Creativity: Why the Arts need to Rethink What Matters

    Global public health expert Michael Marmot warned recently that the pandemic will make health inequalities worse. If this is the case, then how can we ensure that the arts become part of the solution? The 2017 Creative Health report outlined the extensive range of ways in which the arts supports health outcomes, yet the report…

  • We Make the Road by Walking: A ‘Kinder’ Society after COVID-19?

    “In December 1987, Myles Horton and Paolo Freire, two pioneers of education for social change, came together to ‘talk a book’ about their experiences and ideas” (Bell, Gaventa & Peters, 1990. p xv) The seminal book that ensued, ‘We Make the Road by Walking’, marked a major landmark in the development of participatory education for…

  • “Coming Out” and Covid-19

    Sunday 17th May 2020 was International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. It is significant that this year this falls when many LGBTQ+ people are in lock down with their families or relatives to whom they have not disclosed their self-identities. Back in April 2020, during the initial stages of the coronavirus lockdown, the LGBT+…

  • How to Stay ‘Engaged’ at a Distance: Youth Work and COVID-19

    Youth work is all about engaging with young people, engaging them because it is what they want and exploring things that they are interested in. For many, the relationship with their youth worker is the only one where they’re recognised in their own right. Recent research has shown that two million young people need such…

  • Flattening the Acceptance Curve: Transitioning a more Inclusive World after COVID-19

    The impact of lockdown on our daily life has been dramatic. We had to suddenly abandon our routines. Even those privileged with good health and steady employment have experienced severe disruptions. We had to undertake extraordinary tasks while socially-isolating, such as transitioning to online work and/or home-schooling. We have had to revise plans, goals, expectations. …

  • Pandemics, Prohibition and the Past: COVID-19 in Historical Perspective

    The Coronavirus epidemic may be without precedent in living memory, but global pandemics are nothing new. In the sixth century AD the ‘Plague of Justinian’, an outbreak of bubonic plague, killed around 25 million people in Europe and Asia. The best known pandemic, the ‘Black Death’ of 1348-9, is thought to have killed up to…

  • Constructing a ‘New Normal’: What Changes when it’s all over?

    What will life be like once ‘normality’ returns? Without needing to resort to crystal-ball gazing, it is obvious that whatever normality emerges, it will be a form of a ‘new normal’. We will be required to negotiate radically altered public health and economic conditions, as well as new complex emotional geographies. So here, I want…

  • The Road to Nowhere? Tourism after Covid-19

    We don’t have to look far to see that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on tourism has been both enormous and catastrophic.  All resorts, hotels, restaurants, campsites and visitor attractions are closed, and there are few flights. Tourism as we know it has totally ground to a halt.   How will tourism recover?  This…

  • COVID-19 and Child Abuse in Institutions

    The implications of measures taken to reduce the impact the lockdown for children (and adults) who reside with violent, abusive or exploitative partners and family members have been widely highlighted. For those in such circumstances, ‘keeping the NHS safe’ and ‘saving lives by staying at home’ comes at a very high price. It is well…

  • Citizen Science to tackle Poor Air Quality post COVID-19

    The COVID-19 virus causes respiratory illnesses that can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome, which in some cases requires a ventilator for survival, and may cause permanent lung damage (Cox 2020). Therefore, it is possible that COVID-19 will result in an increased number of individuals who are sensitive to poor air quality. Preliminary research on…

  • Images in the Head; the Pervasiveness of Dreaming in Isolation

    It’s day something of the lockdown and I’m surrounded by images that I don’t understand. There’s an image of a pizza that’s trying to kill me, it’s on the main news three times a day, as if on repeat. Nobody is quite sure where it came from or where it’s going. There are lots of…

  • Dig where you stand: Histories of where you live in a Global Pandemic

    As a public and community historian, I am interested in how people engage with the past in their lives in the present. In an undoubtedly historic moment like a global pandemic our anxieties tend to be on the future; but the past still matters – and right now it appears to be hyperlocal. We are…

  • Blitzed by Myths: The ‘Spirit’ of the Blitz and COVID-19

    In the current climate, particularly today, on the 75th anniversary of VE Day, and the current Prime Minister’s penchant for Churchillian rhetoric, it is perhaps inevitable that people are drawing parallels with the Second World War, the ‘Dunkirk Spirit’, the ‘Britain can take it’ response to the German ‘Blitz’, and so on. Clearly, there are…

  • New Realities? New Culture? What next for HR post Covid-19?

    There is no doubt that changes inflicted on the workforce, practically overnight, are unprecedented. Whilst this shows what can be achieved when there is a collective purpose, as ‘people experts’ we know the toll this takes on some individuals, those who struggle to adapt, especially when it is brought in at such a significant pace…

  • Temporary or Fixed? Changing Business Models in a Global Pandemic

    From lack of hand sanitiser to toilet paper, cargo stuck in ports, crops unpicked in fields and a work force relocated to their homes; organisations and consumers are adopting new approaches to deal with these shortages. With amazing flexibility and agility some firms have shifted their business models, invested in people and processes, explored new…

  • Slackening of Statutory Measures to Safeguard Children: An Outcome of the Coronavirus Outbreak

    Since lock down measures have been implemented in the United Kingdom, the Secretary of State for England has exercised its powers to make changes to regulations concerned with the care planning, placement and review of services designed for some of our most vulnerable children. Specifically, changes have been made which dilute regulations relating to the…

  • Re-imagining a ‘Good Society’ in the wake of COVID-19

    In 1909 Beatrice and Sydney Webb published The Minority Report envisioning ‘a good society’ where the state provided the basics; health, education and welfare, while civil society and the private sector offered extension to this in the form of  wealth, prosperity and societal support. Research, conducted by myself and Professor John Diamond at Edge Hill…