Monteiro participates in INCEPTION Symposium at Institut Pasteur, Paris

Brazil team’s Marko Monteiro made a presentation, titled Health technologies and pandemics: building resilient governance, at the INCEPTION Symposium – Social Sciences and Biology for Understanding Emerging Diseases, organized by Institut Pasteur, Paris on November 25-26, 2021. Monteiro’s talk was based on his co-authored book chapter, “Global Health and Planetary Health,” which proposes principles for global governance of emerging bio risks and ways to increase resilience to withstand future risks. This work is a product of the cooperation around the Global Technology Assessment network.

Monteiro presents findings at the Brazilian Association for Research in Social Science Annual Meeting

Marko Monteiro participated in a roundtable on the politics of responding to Covid 19 in Brazil, sanitary democracy and the right to health at at 2021 Meeting of the Brazilian Association for Research in Social Science (ANPOCS). The event was organized between October 19 and 27, 2021, and Monteiro’s paper, Covid 19 in Brazil: Controversies and the politics of expertise, explored the politics of expertise in Brazil in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Hurlbut moderates session on the “lab leak” hypothesis at STS Summer School

J. Benjamin Hurlbut moderated a panel that discussed the hypothesis that the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped from a Wuhan biology laboratory. The session featured a mix of STS scholars, science writers, and participants in the controversy. Key issues included whether debate about the lab leak hypothesis had been prematurely brought to closure and whether it merited being reopened.

Eisenberger, Boucz, and colleagues present on “COVID-19 and the Rule of Law in New Zealand and Austria” at ICONS Mundo Conference

At the International Society for Public Law, Austria team members Iris Eisenberger and Thomas Boucz presented their research on Austria’s and New Zealand’s pandemic responses and judicial review systems. They examined how the lockdowns were communicated and challenged in the courts. The authors discussed what having judicial review of government communications means for upholding the rule of law in the face of crisis. More information here.

Olofsson reviews Legal Rules in a Crisis (2020) in Sociologisk Forskning

Tobias Oloffson of the Sweden team published a review of Legal Rules in a Crisis by Johan Hirschfeldt and Olof Petersson. The book asks what kind of democratic decision-making a crisis requires and how it differs from “peace-time” political processes. Olofsson’s review emphasized that pandemics necessitate overriding the slow decision-making processes in favor of swift crisis management.

Rao publishes article about Covid response decentralization in Bangalore

Bhargavi Rao of the India team published a critique of India’s centralized approach to responding to Covid-19. Her commentary commended the state government of Karnataka for finally realizing that a pandemic cannot be fought top down and for proposing a decentralised approach at the ward level in Bengaluru.

Saldanha and Rao condemn Bangalore’s plan to bury pandemic dead in landfill

In a press release, Leo Saldanha and Bhargavi Rao, both members of the India team and founders of Environment Support Group (ESG), called on officials to reconsider its plan to use a landfill to cremate and bury the bodies of Covid-19 victims. Saldanha and Rao challenged the government’s claim that two disaster management acts allow it to use the landfill as a crematorium, and demanded a more suitable and dignified solution.  

Brazilian team publishes an analysis of vaccine politics in Brazil

The piece, which addresses disputes over the authorization and rollout of vaccines, appeared in Backchannels, the Society for Social Studies of Science blog. The post links anti-vaccine sentiment to political rupture between João Doria, São Paulo’s governor, and President Jair Bolsonaro.   
© CompCoRe Network