Critique, culture and crisis
Who needs critical social science in a crisis? For those working overtime to save lives and keep society going in extremis, critical scrutiny and debate appear as unhelpful carping from the sidelines. This was implied recently by one leading researcher,...
More…
Gallery
What we have seen this week There are so many things wrong with these HM Government adverts, but even in their own terms, will they persuade even a one person to change their behaviour. Just more crap PR and slogans. ...
More…
Gallery
What we have seen this week Who will miss the deserted streets after the end of lockdown? Distancing advice at the lakeside: the length of a sunbed A new beer inspired by the coward/liars Johnson and Cummings First pub visit...
More…
Life Interrupted: COVID lockdown and Black Lives Matter
I was recently one of three middle-aged students to attend an outdoors, socially distanced yoga class in the countryside near my home in Somerset. We set out our mats and before the class started, the teacher, a white woman, asked...
More…
Mistakes of the Masters: the problem with Chief Scientific Officers
A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find philosophy, like everything else, very much changed there. He had left the world a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum. At Paris the universe is seen composed of vortices of...
More…
Gallery
What we have seen Some people feel so strongly about what has happened during COVID that they are hanging professionally made posters on their houses. Preparations being made for first post lockdown market. New rules for going to...
More…
Why are black & Asian people at greater risk of coronavirus?
The coronavirus pandemic has markedly increased awareness of health inequalities. Researchers have long understood that ethnicity and socioeconomic conditions play a major role in influencing our health, but the pandemic has illuminated these stark inequalities and the need for urgent action...
More…
Gallery
What we have seen this week Protests outside Oriel College, Oxford, to remove the statue of white supremacist Cecil Rhodes Poster seen on wall. ‘Keep your distance’ notice on classroom door in Sweden. The classroom is the same size as...
More…
Lay epidemiology and COVID-19
Was the COVID-19 virus moving around the world in late 2019? And did we actually already have that information, but lacked the collective framework to make lay epidemiology coherent? In terms of seeding and propagating the COVID-19 virus within the...
More…
Tenacious hope
With widespread lock-down measures to counteract the spread of COVID-19 infection, the possibility of the world under a radically changed order proved fascinating. Despite the suffering of the pandemic, were we getting glimpses of a better world? Unpolluted city vistas,...
More…
Face-mask wearing and public health messaging