Month: February 2023

On 2 March at 1600 CET, Luissa Vahedi, Washington University in St. Louis, will present: “COVID-19 and Violence against Women and Girls: Understanding Synergies, Long-term Consequences, and Lessons Learned for a More Equitable Future.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to the often-hidden issue of violence against women and girls.  Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, what have we learned about how and why violence against women and girls increases during periods of crisis and where do we go from here? Drawing on syndemic theory and two case studies from the Latin American context, this webinar will discuss what social and political conditions increase the risk for violence against women and girls during a pandemic context and what social policy can do to address threats to women and girls’ safety. The webinar will also engage with the long term and negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on violence prevention and response systems in low- and middle-income countries, with a focus on what violence protection organizations need to strengthen their efforts in the face of future threats.

Luissa Vahedi is a Social Epidemiologist and current Doctoral candidate in Public Health Sciences. Her research, scholarship, and policy work applies the methods and frameworks of social epidemiology to address complex global health issues including gender based violence, mental health, and infectious disease in fragile settings.

Since 2017, Luissa has worked both within and outside of academia conducting specialized research pertaining to systematic evidence reviews, advanced quantitative and qualitative analysis, the integration of gender and violence protections within social policy and humanitarian programming, and syndemic health disparities.

Luissa’s passions lie at the nexus of mixing research methods to capture population based data with rich lived experience and developing best practices for translating public health research into policy and practice.

Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

Have you missed recent webinars? Catch up here:

Marama Muru-Lanning, University of Auckland, “Hongi (pressing of noses), Harirū (handshakes) and Hau (sharing breath): In the time of COVID-19.”:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aGdxALLBpRoEED_DCysHMKXIfcjzXKWB/view?usp=share_link

Mikaela Adams, University of Mississippi, “Influenza in Indian Country: Indigenous Sickness and Federal Responsibility during the 1918-1920 Pandemic.”:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rs6VrpLBChBDphEo6otpm-pTL2t48TWx/view?usp=sharing

And other past webinars here:

New webinar video links

On 16 February at 1600 CET, Mikaëla Adams, University of Mississippi, will present: “Influenza in Indian Country: Indigenous Sickness and Federal Responsibility during the 1918-1920 Pandemic.”

The so-called “Spanish flu,” a deadly new strain of avian influenza that first emerged sometime in the early spring of 1918, infected global populations with shocking intensity and devastating results. By 1920, a third of the global population had contracted the disease and at least fifty million people had died from it, including more than 675,000 in the United States. Indian Country—the areas within the United States inhabited by the nation’s Indigenous peoples—was particularly hard hit. According to a 1919 report, at least 78,177 Native people caught influenza and 6,632 died out of a population of just 320,654. This Indigenous mortality rate of 2.1% was nearly four times higher than that of the nation’s large cities. My current research project traces the history of the influenza pandemic in Indian Country. In this presentation, I will discuss the ways in which the economic, cultural, and racial marginalization of Native people in early twentieth-century America limited their access to medical care and contributed to their disproportionate mortality rate during the outbreak. I will also outline some of lessons we might draw from that experience when we consider the ongoing health needs of marginalized communities today, especially in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.

Mikaëla M. Adams is an adjunct associate professor of Native American history for the University of Mississippi. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. Her first book, Who Belongs? Race, Resources, and Tribal Citizenship in the Native South, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2016, explores themes of Indigenous identity, citizenship, and sovereignty in the Jim Crow South. Her current project examines the influenza pandemic of 1918-1920 in Indian Country. She also has published articles in the Florida Historical Quarterly, the South Carolina Historical Magazine, the American Indian Quarterly, and the Native South.

Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for the link.