Gabriela Di Giulio and Marko Monteiro participated in a discussion on the recovery from crises – Brazilian public health and environment reflections at University of York on May 19, 2022. The event examined the ways in which recovery from pandemic- and climate change-induced disasters can present opportunities for social change as much as amplifying pre-existing vulnerabilities in societies.
Warren Pearce presented the UK teams chapter for the forthcoming CompCoRe edited volume, Socially-Distanced Science, first at the Institute for Science and Society, University of Nottingham on February 9 and then at the 3S Group (Science, Society & Sustainability), University of East Anglia on May 25. The chapter examines the imagined public within the UK’s scientific advice system to explain why the UK was one of the worst performers during the public health in terms of public health outcomes even though it was considered one of the most prepared nations for a pandemic before Covid-19.
Gabriela Di Giulio presented her paper, “Risk, emergency and sustainability: Reflections on the Brazilian context for global health,” at the LEC Seminar at Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. In her talk, Di Giulio argued that there is a need of a global health approach that enables us to better understand how Covid-19 pandemic and other systemic crises are the result of complex interactions between environment and social actions, and how their synergistic and cumulative effects demand deep changes in the pattern of civilization and urgent transformations for a more adapted future.
UK Team’s James Wilsdon, a critic of UK’s Independent SAGE, was invited to the group’s briefing on May 6 as a guest. Wilsdon’s talk focused on the role of humility and openness in UK’s systemic advice system, asking why past lessons were forgotten. You can watch Wilsdon’s remarks here.
Sheila Jasanoff talked about technology and surveillance in the post-Covid era to scholars from Thailand Institute of Justice and Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy on May 5, 2022. Jasanoff’s remarks drew on the research conducted by the members of the CompCoRe project.
Sheila Jasanoff delivered the Dr. Seng Tee Lee Lecture at University of Cambridge on March 11, 2022. Titled “Democracy and Distrust after the Pandemic,” her talk explored the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic brought into sharp focus the strengths and weaknesses of the links between science, technology and society. Situating the opposition to vaccines, masks, and other public health mandates within a framework of constitutional theory, she argued that building better after the pandemic will require an explicit engagement with the tacit rules of delegation and deliberation that underpin modern democracies. You can watch the lecture here.
Sheila Jasanoff was hosted by the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at University of Oxford on March 9. Titled Sovereignty Unmasked: STS, the Pandemic, and Political Theory,” Jasanoff’s remarks focused on the governance regime that she calls “public health sovereignty.” She explored the rules and practices of delegation that help explain why resistance has followed divergent paths across the 16 countries included in the CompCoRe project. The talk reflected on the method of comparison as a device for illuminating STS’s contributions to political and constitutional theory.
Sheila Jasanoff gave the keynote of the OECD Global Science Forum (GSF) workshop, Scientific advice in crises: Lessons learned from COVID-19, on March 3. The event was part of a project on mobilizing science in response to crises. Titled Comparative Covid Response: crisis, knowledge, politics, Jasanoff’s presentation outlined the CompCoRe project and its key findings. The event can be viewed here.
Sheila Jasanoff participated in an online panel entitled “(Mis)trust in Science and Elites” on February 25. The event was organized by the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and was part of a speaker series on Society, Science, and Policy: Lessons from the Coronavirus Pandemic. The series seeks to strengthen understanding of the changing cultural and societal context of science in the United States and other nations and explore the implications for science-based policies, scientific careers, and scientific cooperation. You can watch the event here.
After the Spotify controversy over popular podcaster Joe Rogan’s interview with Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious disease expert with controversial views, New York Times tapped on a dataset prepared by the Swedish teams Tobias Olofsson and Andreas Vilhelmsson. In the podcast, Rogan and Malone claimed that Sweden had not imposed any restrictions on its citizens in response to the pandemic and just let them make decisions for themselves. US’s newspaper of record relied on Olofsson and Vilhelmsson’s timeline of Sweden’s policy response to the pandemic to debunk this often repeated myth, characterizing Sweden’s approach as laissez faire. You can read the NYT story here and access the timeline here.
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