It’s been a busy few weeks for the Science in Society crew!
Nayantara Sheoran Appleton is part of a team of scholars from Aotearoa and the United Kingdom who have been studying the ‘bubble strategy’ of Covid-19 containment. Their report, Living in Bubbles during the Coronavirus Pandemic: Insights from New Zealand, can be read in full here.
She also has a post on the Somatosphere blog about the concept of ‘the bubble’ that has guided Aotearoa’s Covid-19 response. She tracks the growth and burst of other bubble metaphors, in film, in financial disourse, and housing markets. Ultimately, she asks, “what does the bubble do (or not do) to social lives and medical everyday as an artefact of emergency public health measures?”
Tim Corballis and collaborator Fiona Amundsen are featured in a podcast by the Dowse gallery, in conversation about their upcoming exhibition, ‘Human Hand’. The exhibition uses video and film photography to explore the intersections of everyday living and military captalism in Arizona, USA.
PhD student and recent MSc(Soc) graduate Zoë Heine charts how Aotearoa’s gardeners adapted to the Level Four lockdown, pausing plant swaps, identifying mystery plants, and sharing advice online, in this blog post for the Garden History Research Foundation.
James Beattie‘s Newsroom piece, originally published on the Garden History Research Foundation blog, explores the histories of the natural environments that many of us have been enjoying during lockdown. James writes that “Now we have time to contemplate the nature on our doorstep, as well as that of our neighbourhood, it’s time for us to consider the origins of some of the parks we are walking in”.
Also on Newsroom, Courtney Addison has written about the limitations of our existing Covid-19 data for public health decision making. “When we make decisions,” she writes, “we make them for each other as well as ourselves. The decision about when and how to exit Level 4 and then Level 3 is deeply informed by how we regard each other and our society more broadly.”
Meanwhile, some CSIS staff have been working on personal blogs. Hazel Godfrey has started her own blog exploring her experience with chronic pain, alongside the science of pain that her research has centred on. Her posts so far include reflections on how pain is represented in popular media, and on the science of pain management. And Rhian Salmon has written about her experience of Level Four, touching on the relationship between science and policy.
Don’t forget that the Science in Society seminar series is up and running via Zoom. Check out our upcoming talks here, and videos of our recent talks on our Facebook page.