Medical Anthropology at UCL

Caring in the times of Corona

PARAS ARORA How does one write about social isolation, mental health issues, and care work-induced fatigue in a local context already scarred with abandonment, loneliness and chronic caregiving? In what ways has the pandemic entered these contexts and what can we gain by attending to the pandemic’s mode of entry into already fragile lives? In…

The Virus And Fear: How Will We Deal With These Two Pandemics?

MARTA ABATEPAULO DE FARIA Considered the most severe respiratory syndrome since the Spanish flu (an H1N1 pandemic) in 1918, which killed between 20 and 50 million people worldwide[1], the Covid-19 pandemic has been spreading fear and uncertainty in the population. Ornell et al. (2020)[2] e Schmidt at al. (2020)[3] discourse about how efforts to contain…

Lives and Deaths with Dementia During Covid-19: Our Shameful (But Hopefully Transformative) Post-Pandemic Legacy

CRISTINA DOUGLAS “How do I escape from here?” The question took me by complete surprise. “This is a care home, Muriel. Your daughter brought you here because it’s safe for you.” Little did I know at that time, only about two months ago, that this will change so dramatically in a matter of weeks. Muriel…

It’s More Than A Juxtaposition: On Discussing Black Lives Matter Demonstrations in the ‘Land of the Free’ and the COVID-19 Pandemic

TIFFANY LOERA No te preocupes hija, estamos bien, my mom says reassuringly to me over the phone as we discuss the current state of the United States. As nations around the world begin to ease their lockdown restrictions, the U.S. reports over 100k deaths from the COVID-19 outbreak (McCarthy and Singh 2020). Other sources report…

Pain and Plight of People with Disabilities during COVID-19 Pandemic: Reflections from Nepal

OBINDRA B. CHAND Recently, in a public forum Lindsay Lee, a WHO Technical Officer with expertise in disability issues, mentioned, “What worries me perhaps more than anything is just the existing barriers that people with disabilities face. I can speak for this myself, personally. Lindsay further explained that health care access is already difficult for some people with disabilities,…

Goethe wears a mask against COVID-19

INAYAT ALI Did Johann Wolfgang von Goethe—the eminent German intellectual of the modern era—wear a mask in his lifetime? Although the question is interesting, the answer is unknown. Nonetheless, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Goethe is wearing a mask–on his statue on Vienna’s renowned Ringstrasse (Ring Street), near to Austria’s National Opera House. Masks are…

Patterns of Contamination: From Fukushima to COVID-19

MAXIME POLLERI In the spring of 2016, I was invited to witness the work of citizen scientists in Fukushima. These citizen scientists were mostly farmers attempting to revitalize the sociocultural life of their region, which had been heavily affected by residual radioactivity in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. At 5:30 on a…

Vectors And Viruses: What Coexisting With Mosquitoes Can Teach Us About Living With Coronavirus

ROSIE SIMS My mask is green with zebras on it, a feeble attempt to liven up the veil of cotton protecting me from others, or others from me. An artefact of a new era. Interaction with other humans reduced to deciphering expressions conveyed by eyes and crinkling foreheads, voices muffled by layers covering mouths. A…

‘Maybe When All This Is Over Jesus Will Come Back’: Crisis, Post-Crisis And Millenarian Time

GARETH BREEN The Pursuit of the Millennium is an influential book by Norman Cohn. In it, Cohn shows quite precisely how in Medieval times millenarian movements periodically rode and arose from within waves of social, political and economic unrest. The book has been influential upon our understandings of why Protestantism took hold in China at…

How Our Behaviour Affects Virus Evolution

DR GUL DENIZ SALALI COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2), but coronaviruses have been among us for years. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, and different strains (genetic variants) choose different species as their hosts. Many people may have first heard about coronaviruses during the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, when a strain was…

Cowboys and Coronavirus: Protesting Covid-19 in ‘The Land of the Free’

ROSIE MATHERS Over the last couple of weeks protests have broken out across America against lockdown measures imposed to reduce the spread and contraction of Covid-19. Rallies across Northern and Southern states have seen demonstrators take the streets to call for an end to quarantine, an urgent reopening the economy, and the return of over…

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS ‘Co-existing with Covid-19: Moving into the post-pandemic world with the social sciences’

NEW UCL MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY BLOG SERIES In the UK, as across much of the world, we find ourselves moving slowly into a new version of reality: post-quarantine, but still very much encapsulated by Covid-19 and the spectre of infectious disease. Whether our respective governments are calling this an ‘exit’ strategy, the lifting of lockdown, or…

God’s Daily Briefings: Religious Leadership in a Global Pandemic

TILAK PAREKH The Voice of God Religious leaders possess immense power and influence. Believers may listen to government ministers or public health officials, but, above all, they place their faith in the religious elite. For many religious people, their quotidian lives are determined almost entirely by their faith. From mundane, banal activities such as what…

Memes, Migrants, And The Epidemiological Imagination

JOSH BABCOCK As COVID-19 escalated to officially pandemic proportions early this year, Coronavirus-prevention advice began circulating via Facebook and WhatsApp in Singapore. Mostly in English and Mandarin, the advice ranged from speculative antiviral uses of onions—“Slice an onion and leave it in the middle of the room overnight so it absorbs all the viruses”—to more…

Pandemic Predictions- The World Post-Covid-19 for Indian Females

DEVASHREE JUVEKAR As the entire world is grappling with the novel coronavirus pandemic, many experts and researchers have predicted a number of social and economic changes that the world would undergo post-pandemic, ranging from an increase in nationalism and decrease in globalization to changes in food choices and a global hunger crisis. I am going…

Mental Health Avenues Amidst A Global Pandemic: Conceptualising The Biosocial Medical Framework Within Urban ‘Green Spaces’

TIFFANY LOERA Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. This is my morning mantra. As I lay in my bed in the early hours of the morning, I am aware of the limited capacity I have to walk the short distance to my workspace. Like clockwork, the strict schedule I have carefully designed for maximum productivity, relentlessly and…

Sociological Reflections In Times Of Change And Uncertainty: Managing Risk, Trying To Adapt And Being Creative

CATARINA DELAUNAY Covid-19 crisis is not democratic in the sense that it affects everyone equally regardless of age, gender, class, ethnicity or geographic area where one lives, as some try to defend. Containment measures were imposed based on the life style and living conditions of the middle class, without considering those with less capacity and…

Sociological Reflections In Times Of Change And Uncertainty: Surveillance, Control And Punishment

CATARINA DELAUNAY On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic on Covid-19. Several countries, across the world, including Portugal, declared a state of emergency, and have been taking several measures, with a strong impact both on people’s daily lives, and in various sectors of the economy and society. Being a…

The ‘Invisible Enemy’: A Critical Look at the Use of Military Metaphors and Anthropomorphisation During The COVID-19 Pandemic

JAMES FOTHERBY In mid-March, before becoming infected with Coronavirus, Boris Johnson declared that his government must act like “any wartime government” while facing a deadly “enemy”. During Johnson’s admission to the Intensive Care Unit in early-April, Michael Gove stated that the Cabinet Office would continue to “marshal all the resources of government in the fight…

Trench Warfare of Mindsets in Switzerland’s Approach to The COVID-19 Pandemic

HÜSLER SAMIRA-SALOMÉ & PYTHON ANNICK MARIA ILDIKO On 26 March 2020, the Federal Council declared an extraordinary situation in accordance with the Epidemic Act and issued a set of measures, including the closure of all the shops, restaurants, bars and other leisure facilities. Businesses at which the recommended distance cannot be maintained (e.g. hairdressing salons)…