Month: January 2025

This is the fourth annual report for the Center for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC). As in previous years, we report here on our research mission, projects and funding applications, the team and institutional collaborations, and outcomes/activities.

1. Short presentation of the center – research perspectives and main goals

Mission statement: PANSOC examines contemporary and historical pandemics to understand social, economic, and biological risk factors and inequalities, and to improve pandemic preparedness.

PANSOC is the only global pandemic research centre that focuses on social science and humanities perspectives and conducts research on past pandemics.

2. Research projects and funding applications

In addition to internal Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) funding at OsloMet, PANSOC’s research has been supported by several externally funded projects in 2024. These are:

I. PANRISK: Socioeconomic risk groups, vaccination and pandemic influenza, (2021–2024) (Research Council of Norway grant agreement No 302336). The project has mapped the socially vulnerable risk groups for influenza, confidence in seasonal influenza vaccination and vaccine uptake by socioeconmic status (paper 10 in Section 5 below), and carried out a systematic review and meta analysis on the associations between socioeconomic status and influenza pandemic outcomes. In this project, we have also studied the COVID-19 pandemic. Examples of topics analyzed are the association between socioeconomic status and (non)pharmaceutical interventions, whether sociodemographic factors play a role in the relation between COVID-19 infection and obesity (paper 12 in Section 5 below), as well as determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy.

II. MERIT – MothER Income InequaliTy (2022–2024). In collaboration with Portuguese partners (Instituto de Saúde Pública da Universidade do Porto, ISPUP) the MERIT project has studied the impact of motherhood in women’s income and careers during COVID-19. We have produced a combination of concrete public policy proposals to minimize asymmetries and promote gender equality in the labour market, especially through motherhood.

III. Work and Wellbeing in History – Young CAS Grant (2023–2024). Job quality is a topic of growing concern in research on quality of life and policymaking. Since the 1999 Report on Decent Work by the Director-General of the International Labour Organization, improving working conditions has become a global policy goal. Decent work, of which job quality is a key component, is a commitment in the Sustainable Development Goals, the G20’s Ankara Declaration, and the EU Pillar of Social Rights. The Work and Wellbeing in History Young CAS Grant Project brought job quality analysis to a historical setting for the first time, broadening the perspective of economic historians who have hitherto focused almost exclusively on wages, and enabling long-run analysis of important aspects of historical work such as autonomy, the career development of earnings, and work meaningfulness. It also linked the extensive research on present job quality in economics, sociology, and policy research institutes to historical studies. These connections enrich historical research with the sophisticated frameworks and methods of contemporary studies, and they vastly expand the potential for job quality analysis to contribute to key scientific and public policy topics by enabling its exploration over the long run.

3. Research team and institutional collaborations

In 2024, PANSOC consisted of the following researchers: Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Benjamin Schneider, Vibeke Nyborg Narverud, Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar, Hampton Gaddy and Gerardo Chowell-Puente. We have also recruited several OsloMet MA students to collaborate with us.

Outgoing researchers and students: Gerardo Chowell-Puente has been employed in a 20% position (Professor II) with us in 2024 and is now back as a full-time professor in mathematical modelling of infectious diseases at Georgia State university. Hampton Gaddy has been employed in a 20% position with us in 2024 and is now back as a full-time PhD-student working on his thesis at London School of Economic (excess mortality during the 1918 influenza pandemic in the USA). Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar has now moved on to a post-doc at Heidelberg University.

Uddhav Khakurel (MA in International Social Welfare and Health Policy) has been a research assistant in various projects, including PANSOC’s 2022–23 CAS Project “Social Science Meets Biology”. Khakurel defended his MA thesis on non-pharmaceutical interventions in Alaska during the 1918-20 influenza pandemic in December 2024, and his MA paper is also a revise and resubmit in the American journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Guest researcher program: In 2024, we hosted three guest researchers, all of whom presented their ongoing research either to Centre seminars or in public fora and discussed ideas and collaboration opportunities with us informally.

Merle Eisenberg, a historian of pandemics and infectious diseases from Oklahoma State University, visited PANSOC between 16 May and 5 Jun).

Nita Bharti, a biologist at Penn State University visited PANSOC from 14 August to 8 September.

Adolfo García-Sastre, one of the leading global researchers on influenza and Professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, spent a week at PANSOC in connection with his invited PANSOC Lecture at the Academy of Science and Letters on 6 November. See the recording of his lecture “Influenza 1918–2024” here.

Incoming research assistants and master students: Amal Hassan (MA Student, International Social Welfare and Health Policy) is writing her thesis on the on uptake of non-pharmaceutical interventions among immigrants in Oslo during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lewhat Kifleyesus (MA Student, International Social Welfare and Health Policy) participated in the Centre’s activities as part of the course SIW4500: Research Training, at Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy, OsloMet.

Sabbatical: Centre leader Mamelund stayed 5 weeks at University of Queensland from 1 September to 4 October. During the stay he synergized his expertise in historical pandemics with the virological and immunological knowledge of our partners in wet-lab studies (Prof. Kirsty Short), including the use of mouse models and studies of century old extra-respiratory tissues from victims of historical influenza pandemics. Mamelund’s sabbatical was funded by a CAS Alumni Fellowship. This fellowship is awarded to past Principal Investigators of projects at the Centre for Advanced Study, such as the 2022-23 project for which Mamelund was PI – see more here.

4. Research outcomes/activities

Journal articles: In 2024, PANSOC has (co)authored 13 scientific peer-reviewed articles in journals in public health, epidemiology, vaccinology, medicine, and social science and health (see Section 5 at the end of this report).

Top 2% Scientists: Centre leader Mamelund is among Top 2% Scientists in his field in Stanford University’s 2024 recently published ranking. He is ranked 1145 of 69595 in Public Health. Read more about the ranking and make your own searches.

ERC advanced grant interview: In December 2024, Centre leader Mamelund was invited for an interview ERC advanced grant interview in March 2025.

Seminar & Conference Organization: We hosted 13 international Pandemics & Society Seminars on Zoom in 2024 (video recordings available). As part of the Work and Wellbeing in History project at CAS, post-doc Ben Schneider organized a series of seminars, as well as a workshop a CAS and a capstone conference at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Selected conference presentations and invited talks: Centre leader Mamelund was invited to deliver a keynote lecture at one of the world’s leading conferences on influenza, OPTIONS XII in Brisbane, Australia (29 September–2 October). His keynote was entitled “Old data gives new clues to the ‘mother’ of all pandemics”. The conference program is available here.

Centre leader Mamelund also delivered an invited talk titled “Social disparities & Pandemic preparedness” at the workshop “Economic and Social factors in in Epidemics”, 19–20 November 2024, ISI Foundation, ​Turin, Italy.

Post-doc Ben Schneider was invited to give five seminar presentations in 2024, including at the University of Cambridge and Lund University.

On 8–9 February, Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar, Uddhav Khakurel and Centre leader Mamelund presented at a workshop on epidemics in Barcelona. Hampton Gaddy presented at the seminar “From Influenza to COVID Continuity and Discontinuity in the Factors of Inequality”, held in Madrid on 14–15 November.

Interview in media: Centre leader Mamelund was interviewed on a podcast by Espen Goffeng in June. It was an exciting conversation about historical pandemics, risk factors and consequences. What exactly is long Covid? How much Covid is actually in this condition? Did you know that there was a “long Spanish flu” in 1918? We also talked about Covid reactions, politicization, the Spanish flu, the Russian Flu, the Hong Kong virus and pandemics as perhaps the most unfortunate side effect of civilizations.

Listen to the podcast (in Norwegian) on Spotify.

Opinion pieces: Together with several prominent Norwegian researchers, Centre leader Mamelund wrote an opinion piece in October on how worried we should be about highly pathogenic avian flu (“Hvor bekymret skal vi være for fugleinfluensa? Det korte svaret: ganske bekymret”). In connection with Adolfo García-Sastre’s visit in November, he also wrote on the same topic in ScienceNorway.no in an article entitled “The next big pandemic? Avian flu takes a worrying step closer to humans“.

5. Summary

PANSOC continues to fulfill its mission of advancing the knowledge frontier in pandemic studies through a combination of present and historical investigations, and dissemination of our outputs to the public. The Centre produces an exceptionally high number of publications per researcher and continues to publish socially relevant research in high-impact journals. Our continuing international collaborations have fostered important and promising new concepts for externally funded projects that will build on the Centre’s first four years of support from OsloMet.

Papers published in 2024:

1. Elienai Joaquin-Damas,  Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Benjamin M. Schneider, Beatriz E. Sánchez-Hernández, Amanda Patishtán-López, Amanda Bleichrodt & Gerardo Chowell (2024):Evaluating COVID-19 impact, vaccination, birth registration, and underreporting in a predominantly indigenous population in Chiapas, Mexico, BMC Infectious Diseases, Volume 24, article number 1376.
   
2. Nadja Hedrich,Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar, Martin P. Grobusch, Patricia Schlagenhauf (2024): Aedes-Borne Arboviral Infections in Europe from 2000–2023: A Systematic Review, Preprints with The Lancet.
   
3. Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar & Leonhard Held (2024): Improving Reproducibility in Epidemiology, Handbook of Epidemiology. First Online: 29 March 2024, pp. 1-22.
   
4. Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar, Manex Agirrezabal & Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen (2024): Getting to Grippe With Influenza: An Investigation of Why the Disease Is Called That. Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference.
   
5. Birgitte Klüwer, Kjersti Margrethe Rydland, Svenn-Erik Mamelund & Rebecca Nybru Gleditsch (2024): Drivers and barriers of seasonal influenza vaccination 2015/16 & 2019/20 to 2022/23 – a survey on why most Norwegians don’t get the flu vaccine. BMC Public Health, Volume 24, article number 2687.
   
6. Sushma Dahal, Iris Delgado, Lisa Sattenspiel, Svenn-Erik Mamelund & Gerardo Chowell (2024): Comparative analysis of COVID-19 diagnoses and mortality among hospitalized indigenous and non-indigenous populations in Chile: 2020–2021. BMC Public Health, Volume 24, article number 2337.
   
7. Gerardo Chowell and Nazrul Islam (2024): Political Determinants of Health: Has COVID-19 Exposed the Worst of It? American Journal of Public Health.
   
8. Lisa Sattenspiel, Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Sushma Dahal, Amanda Wissler, Gerardo Chowell, Emma Tinker-Fortel (2024): Death on the permafrost: revisiting the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in Alaska using death certificates. American Journal of Epidemiology.
   
9. Per-Henrik Zahl, Rune Johansen, Örjan Hemström & Svenn-Erik Mamelund (2024): Responses to the letters on “Mortality in Norway and Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic 2020 – 22: A comparative study.” Journal of Infection and Public Health, volume 17, issues 6, pages 1145-1146.
   
10. Birgitte Klüwer, Rebecca Gleditsch, Kjersti Margrethe Rydland, Svenn-Erik Mamelund & Ida Laake (2024): Higher educational attainment associated with higher confidence in influenza vaccination in Norway, Vaccine, volume 42, issue 11, pages 2837-2847.
    
11. Mathias Mølbak Ingholt,Lone Simonsen, Svenn-Erik Mamelund, Paneeraq Noahsen & Maarten van Wijhe (2024): The 1919–21 influenza pandemic in Greenland. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, Volume 83, Issue 1.
    
12. Margarida Pereira (2024): Do sociodemographic factors play a role in the relation between COVID-19 infection and obesity? Findings from a cross-sectional study in eastern Oslo. Journal of Public Health.
    
13. Maria Bekker-Nielsen Dunbar (2024): Transmission matrices used in epidemiologic modelling. Infectious Disease Modelling. Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 185-194.