Medical Anthropology at UCL

Mapping out the Affect of Covid-19 on Cancer Care in the UK: Reflections on a Changed Landscape

CLARA FABIAN-THEROND As a medical anthropology PhD student my plan was to start ethnographic research, examining the socio-cultural impact of personalised therapeutics in the NHS colorectal and ovarian cancer treatment setting, in late spring. The arrival of coronavirus in the UK, however, halted this planned start date. Instead, over the last three or so months…

From Transmutation to Strangeness: The House under Scrutiny

MARÍA FLORENCIA BLANCO ESMORIS La Matanza, Buenos Aires, Argentina I woke up, changed, and my partner made mate[1]. I looked at my cell phone and I had at least 18 new e-mails. The routine began. The transmutation of the house that was part of the beginning of this physical isolation experience in Argentina started to…

The Making of a Paper Crisis: Coexisting with COVID-19 in Indonesia

GEGER RIYANTO The COVID-19 pandemic is certainly far from over in Indonesia. In fact, as I write this piece (June 6th), the COVID-19 infections are constantly escalating. Each day we set a new record of infection numbers. However, many people do not feel like we are approaching a critical juncture of the pandemic. The public,…

The Case Against The ‘Singularity’

GRAHAM WILKES The definition of a ‘Singularity’ is something with ‘an unusual or distinctive manner or behaviour’. Something, or an event, that is ‘out of the ordinary’. Something that can be perceived to be so rare that it doesn’t warrant serious consideration, even though its impact may be devastating. So, does that mean that we…

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…