Book panel: Governing the Crisis. Narratives of COVID-19 in India

Today Dr. Rahul Ranjan presented his book “Governing the Crisis: Narratives of Covid 19 in India” (Talyor & Francis, 2025) at a seminar held at Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society.

Dr. Ranjan is writer and assistant professor in Environmental and climate Justice at the Department of Human Geography, School of Geosciences, University if Edinburgh.

Discussions evolved around three main areas:

I. Law, Biomedical Emergencies, and Policy Response

II. Migration, Indigeneity, and Cultural Impact

II. Frontline Workers, Caste Dynamics, and Labour Force

New Paper: Socioeconomic inequalities in Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic: A regional analysis of income poverty | PLOS One

This new paper is a collaboration with colleagues in Chile and Mexico. You can read it here:

Socioeconomic inequalities in Chile during the COVID-19 pandemic: A regional analysis of income poverty | PLOS One

he COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented economic crisis, intensifying poverty levels in Latin America, particularly in Chile. This study examines the short- and long-term socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on income poverty in Chile, focusing on regional disparities, rurality, ethnicity, educational attainment, and immigration. Using data from the Chile National Socioeconomic Characterization Survey (CASEN) for 2017, 2020, and 2022, we analyzed poverty trends across the pre-pandemic, pandemic, and post-pandemic periods. We employed spatial clustering techniques with Local Moran’s I to detect poverty hotspots and applied logistic regression models to identify key sociodemographic factors associated with these hotspots. Our results reveal stark regional disparities, with disproportionately higher poverty rates among rural populations, Indigenous communities, and individuals with lower education levels or immigrant backgrounds. The proportion of individuals in poverty hotspots rose from 6.8% in 2017 to 8.6% in 2020, before slightly declining to 7.7% in 2022. Although emergency monetary subsidies helped reduce overall poverty from 10.8% in 2020 to 6.5% in 2022, these measures were insufficient to address deep-rooted structural inequalities. Our findings underscore the urgent need for targeted, long-term policies that go beyond temporary financial assistance and tackle systemic disparities linked to rurality, ethnicity, education, and immigration. Such measures are essential for achieving sustainable poverty reduction and fostering inclusive economic growth in Chile.

Mamelund co-author on two new papers

Our Centre-leader is co-author on a new paper with several external collaborators, “The Role of Social Media in Mitigating the Long-Term Impact of Social Isolation on Mental and Cognitive Health in Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The HUNT Study”,  International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry | Wiley Online Library

Summary

  • Those experiencing social isolation during the pandemic faced a larger decline in mental health, but not cognitive health, compared to those who were not isolated.
  • Staying connected through social media during the pandemic did not prevent mental health decline but was associated with a slower rate of cognitive decline in both socially isolated and not isolated individuals.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the limitations of relying only on digital solutions to maintain social connections, mental health, and cognitive function.

Mamelund was also co-author on another recently published paper, “A longitudinal cohort study on dispensed analgesic and psychotropic medications in older adults before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic: the HUNT study” in BMC Geriatrics.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-025-05745-8

Pandemics & Society Seminar, 8 May: Spatio-temporal Contours of Plague Spread in the Later Mamluk Period, c. 1363–1517

For the sixth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Philip Slavin (University of Stirling). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 8 May at the normal time (1600 CEST). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

The late Michael Dols has produced much valuable research on the topic of plague outbreaks in Mamluk Middle East. Paradoxically – and with the exception of Stuart Borsch’s work on the Black Death in Egypt — the topic remains under-investigated, with many questions unanswered. The proposed paper will focus on the question: When and how was plague imported into Egypt and how did it spread over its territories, in the later Mamluk period. Did Egypt have its own plague reservoir, as claimed by some 18th– and 19th-century writers, both Western and Egyptian? Or was it imported from elsewhere? If so, from where and by what means? And how would plague spread within Egypt, once imported on ships or on camelback? To answer this questions, the paper will rely on a wide array of sources – first and foremost, Mamluk chronicles, but also other, hitherto unutilised materials, including pilgrims’ travelogs, and correspondence of Italian merchants, , notaries, travellers and diplomats (often overlapping categories). Taken together, these sources connect together pieces of puzzle, thus revealing some fascinating insights into the questions above. Although dealing with a later period compared to other conference papers, its methodology, findings and conclusions may appear instructive to scholars and scientists of earlier plague/ infectious diseases in Egypt, for which much less source material survives.

About the Speaker

Philip Slavin received a BA and MA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a PhD from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale and McGill, and taught at Kent before becoming Professor of History at Stirling. He is a historian working on the global history of infectious diseases and environmental disasters. He is currently engaged in several inter-disciplinary projects dealing with ‘big questions’ of the history of evolution and ecology of plague, on a global scale and in a longue durée perspective, in collaboration with aDNA scientists and palaeo-climatologists. He has published two books and 55 articles on various topics of economic, environmental history and history of diseases.  

Pandemics & Society Seminar, 24 April: Invisible Illness, A (Part of the) History

For the fifth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Emily Mendenhall (Georgetown University). Note that the seminar will be held on Thursday, 24 April, one hour earlier than usual at 1500 CEST. More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

Long Covid is an old story linked to a new virus. Chronic Lyme. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Chronic Pain. These contested conditions are interpreted with trepidation—in many cases throughout history they have been considered unreal or imagined among medical professional: a cry for help from a hysterical woman. Though, their prominence is patterned throughout history and takes center stage in famous literature, social science, and medical humanities. Because women are centered as those most afflicted by these conditions, they have become largely feminized and dismissed, regardless of who they are. Yet, the long history of symptoms that are defined as “unexplained” or “complex” or “contested” tell us more about medicine than they do about people. These symptoms may be physical—such as pain in the back, extremities, or the base of the neck. They may be psychological—such as dissociation, brain fog, or lack of focus. They may be emotional—such as deep sadness or anxiety. It is important to listen to these complex bundles of symptoms and try to decipher them: not only through the arc of someone’s life but also a cultural history through which they have emerged, shifted, and transformed. In this talk, I track this history, beginning with hysteria, and leading us to the present-day.

About the Speaker

Emily Mendenhall is a medical anthropologist, Guggenheim Fellow, and Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Mendenhall has published widely at the boundaries of anthropology, psychology, medicine, and public health. This work focuses on social and biological links between social trauma and diabetes, the theory and experience of syndemics, how and why people use idioms of distress, mental health and well-being, complex chronic illness, and the politics of pandemics. Her monographs include Syndemic Suffering: Social Distress, Depression, and Diabetes among Mexican Immigrant Women (2012), Rethinking Diabetes: Entanglements with Trauma, Poverty, and HIV (2019), and Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (2022). Her new book, Invisible Illness: A History, from Hysteria to Long Covid, will be published in 2025.

Mamelund Highly Ranked Lifetime Pandemic Scholar

Our Centre Leader, Professor Mamelund, is ranked #38 among the “Highly Ranked Lifetime Scholars” globally in the field of “Pandemic”, defined as eminent authors (active, retired, and deceased) whose Top Percentage Ranks places them in the top 0.05 % of all scholars due to their lifetime scholarly contributions. See more here: Svenn-Erik Mamelund | Scholar Profiles and Rankings | ScholarGPS

Highly Ranked Scholars are the most productive (number of publications) authors whose works are of profound impact (citations) and of utmost quality (h-index). Enabled by the generation of over 30 million detailed scholar profiles based on unique ScholarGPS classification of over 200 million scholarly publications of record into one of over 350,000 distinct Specialties, 177 Disciplines, and 14 Fields, Highly Ranked Scholars are, for the first time, identified within each Specialty, Discipline, Field, and all Fields. Highly Ranked Scholars are those with ScholarGPS Ranks of 0.05% or better. The data used to identify the ScholarGPS Highly Ranked Scholars are based on lifetime or prior five-year activity, weighting each publication and citation by the number of authors, and excluding self-citations.

Pandemics & Society Seminar, 3 April: The COVID-19 Pandemic in the Global South

For the fourth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Marília Nepomuceno (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 3 April at the normal time (1600 CEST). For our attendees outside of Europe, please note that Central European Summer Time has begun, you can check the seminar time in your time zone here. More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

We also note that the seminar previously scheduled for 22 May with Katarina Luise Matthes (Universität Zürich) has been postponed until Fall 2025.

Abstract

This talk explores the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South, and highlights why context matters in understanding pandemics. I will discuss two key aspects: (1) the demographic challenges that low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face in responding to pandemics and epidemics, with a focus on older populations, and (2) how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped overall levels of mortality and the age structure of causes of death in an LMIC. This presentation invites you to rethink pandemic preparedness and impact beyond the high-income framework.

About the Speaker

Marília Nepomuceno is a research scientist and PhD training chair at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Her research focuses on advancing demographic methods, and mortality and health in later life, addressing multiple dimensions of demographic analysis, including age, gender, education, and spatial dimensions. Marília’s research also includes data quality in low- and middle-income countries, the centenarian population, lifespan inequalities, mortality shocks, and seasonal mortality.

New Guest Researcher: Umit Tleshova

We look forward to welcoming Umit Tleshova as a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC) at Oslo Metropolitan University from April 25th to May 30th, 2025. Umit is a PhD student at the Department of Demography and Geodemography at Charles University in Prague. Her research focuses on mortality inequalities, particularly in the WHO European Region, examining life expectancy trends, gender gaps, and the impact of governance on health outcomes.

Umit’s academic journey is deeply rooted in demography and public health. Her article, co-authored with Dr. Klára Hulíková Tesárková and Prof. Dagmar Dzúrová, “Decoding Life Expectancy Gaps: A Long-Term Decomposition Analysis of Three WHO European Region Country Groups,” was recently accepted for publication in Taylor & Francis, Cogent Social Sciences Journal. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of life expectancy trends and their decomposition across different country groups within the WHO EUR, introducing a novel statistical methodology and contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) on health and well-being. Her second study, “COVID-19 Mortality Data and Level of Democracy in Post-Communist Countries: Data Sources and Accuracy,” examines the relationship between governance and the accuracy of reported COVID-19 mortality data. During her Master’s program, Umit conducted field research in Nairobi, Kenya. This research focused on engaging with social enterprises and analyzing economic challenges faced by females in developing economies, further shaping her interest in demographic and public health disparities.

At PANSOC, Umit aims to collaborate with leading researchers to explore the intersection of pandemics, socioeconomic disparities, and governance. She is particularly interested in contributing to the centre’s mission to reduce social inequalities (UN SDG Goal 10), eradicate poverty (Goal 1), and ensure good health for all (Goal 3). Engaging with PANSOC’s interdisciplinary discussions, webinar series, and collaborative research environment, Umit looks forward to further refining her work on mortality inequalities and their broader implications for public health policy.

Contact: tleshovu@natur.cuni.cz, umit.tleshova@gmail.com

Pandemics & Society Seminar, 20 March: How can pathogen genomic data uncover community drivers and determinants of COVID-19 spread?

For the third Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2025 series we are pleased to welcome Jessica Stockdale (Simon Fraser University). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 20 March at the normal time (1600 CET). More information about our speaker and the presentation is below. You can sign up for email notifications about the seminar series, including the Zoom details, here.

Abstract

Genomic epidemiology has become a critical part of the infectious disease toolbox, that sheds light on the effects of pathogen evolution on transmission. While genomic tools are now routinely used to track the emergence of novel pathogens and strains, their use in forecasting and efforts to model drivers of local transmission is still developing. In this talk, I will present a statistical modelling framework that forecasts the size of an upcoming COVID-19 wave, such as that driven by a new variant. This framework combines diverse global data, including COVID-19 genomic sequences and epidemiological, clinical and demographic features. We are able to assess which predictors were more or less influential on wave size, and how this varied during the pandemic. Focusing on the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 waves, we found that local genomic landscapes and demographic features were impactful on wave sizes around the world, and the importance of predictors changed markedly between waves, reflecting ongoing changes in underlying epidemiology and our public health response.

About the Speaker

Dr. Jessica Stockdale is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Simon Fraser University and a member of the Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society. Her research uses approaches in mathematical and statistical modelling to address challenges in public health, with a focus on infectious disease. Currently, her work spans the development of methods in genomic epidemiology to predict patterns of disease transmission, to applied healthcare modelling supporting response to homelessness and housing insecurity.