Category: Pandemics & Society Seminars

About the talk:

This talk examines how teachers and learners around the world coped when the COVID-19 pandemic forced education online almost overnight. Drawing on survey responses from over 8,000 teachers and students across 118 countries, the study offers one of the most geographically wide-ranging pictures of the emergency shift to remote teaching to date.

The study investigates a wide range of factors that shaped how teachers and students experienced the crisis. These include the level and type of institution teachers worked in, how classes were delivered, and whether the economic context of the country made a difference. The research also looks at the emotional and psychological dimensions of the experience – what drove stress and burnout among educators, and how teachers’ perceptions of their students’ wellbeing fed back into their own. A particular focus is placed on what the shift to online teaching meant for actual learning progress, and whether some groups of learners were more affected than others. On the student side, the talk will explore what distinguished those who coped relatively well from those who found the transition more difficult, and what all of this might mean for the future of online teaching.

Beyond the immediate teaching context, the study examines how the way people navigated the disruption was influenced by individual characteristics, such as having a more outgoing personality or speaking multiple languages. Implications will also be made for the optimal way to operationalise multilingualism.

About the speaker:

Michał B. Paradowski is a professor and teacher trainer at the Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, and a research and language teaching consultant. His work spans second language acquisition, bi- and multilingualism, psycholinguistics, and educational psychology, with a growing focus on how learning is shaped by social and situational factors, including in times of disruption. He has published over 80 scientific works and delivered more than 260 invited lectures, seminars and workshops worldwide.

You may also be interested in another upcoming talk by Michał B. Paradowski at the University of Oslo, as part of the Language and Cognition Forum series, on Friday 17 April at 12:15: Your network is your net worth: How social ties drive second language learning from sojourners to settlers. Place: Henrik Wergelands Hus, Meeting Room 421.

For the ninth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Raj Kumar Subedi (Georgia State University). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 9 April at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk:

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted deep-rooted health inequities globally, with marginalized populations showing disproportionate disease burden. We employed Serfling regression models and multivariable analyses to estimate excess mortality across geographic, demographic, and poverty groups from 2020 to 2022 in Chile. Elderly populations (80+ years) experienced the highest excess mortality (267.35 per 10 000 population), more than 8 times higher than those under 80 years (30.80 per 10 000 population). Multivariable linear regression models showed both Indigenous proportion (coefficient = 53.66, P < .001) and elderly population proportion (coefficient = 5.68, P < .01) as the strong predictors of comuna level excess mortality. Poverty correlated significantly with excess mortality (r = 0.23, P < .001) but this association weakened after adjustment for other covariates in multivariable models. Excess mortality peaked in 2021 rather than in 2020 for most groups, with males initially experiencing higher rates during early pandemic waves. Spatial analyses revealed statistically significant clustering (Moran’s I = 0.119, P < .001) with identifiable hotspots in northern Chile and parts of the south. These findings indicated persistent mortality disparities by age and Indigenous status, independent of poverty, and highlight the urgent need for equity-focused pandemic preparedness. An effective pandemic response should integrate biomedical measures, such as vaccination, with culturally grounded strategies that address structural barriers and the broader social determinants of health.

You can read full paper here: Poverty and ethnic patterns in COVID-19 excess mortality: evidence from Chile, 2020-2022 | American Journal of Epidemiology | Oxford Academic

About the speaker:

Raj Subedi is Graduate Research Assistant at School of Public Health, Georgia State University, USA. He has a Master’s degree in Public Health from BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences and a background in public health research and has previously worked at various organizations, including the Nepal Public Health Foundation and St. Jude’s Recovery Center. 

For the eight Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Hamed Karami (Georgia State University). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 2 April at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk:

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted health systems worldwide, with important consequences beyond direct COVID-19 deaths. In this talk, I examine how these disruptions affected tuberculosis (TB) outcomes, leading to excess burden and widening inequalities. Using data-driven modeling approaches, I highlight global patterns as well as uneven impacts within the United States, with a focus on structural vulnerabilities and lessons for building more resilient TB control systems.

About the speaker:

Hamed Karami is a PhD student in Mathematics and an MS student in Applied Statistics at Georgia State University. He holds a PhD in pure mathematics from Iran University of Science and Technology, as well as undergraduate and master’s degrees in applied and pure mathematics from Shahed University and Sharif University of Technology, respectively. His research focuses on mathematical and statistical modeling of infectious diseases, including control problems, network-based models, and statistical approaches.

For the seventh Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Abigail Dumes (University of Michigan). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 19 March at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk:

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 400 million people worldwide have had Long COVID, a term that describes a range of often disabling symptoms that persist for at least three months after the acute phase of COVID-19 (Al-Aly et al. 2024). In the US alone, federal survey data reveal that around 5.3 percent of all US adults—or 13.7 million people—are “currently experiencing Long COVID” (National Center for Health Statistics 2024). Due to its potential to significantly disrupt activities of daily living, Long COVID can qualify as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and emerging research has shown that Long COVID disproportionately affects individuals with preexisting disabilities (Cohen and Rodgers 2024). Survey data suggests that there is a correlation between Long COVID and “increased odds of work loss” (Venkatesh et al. 2024), but much less is known about the lived experience of Long COVID and disability in the context of work, particularly among higher education employees. In this paper, I discuss early qualitative data from a multiphase, multidisciplinary mixed methods project focused on University of Michigan-Ann Arbor faculty and staff with Long COVID to begin to shed light on the relationship between Long COVID, work, and disability and to map out a future for more equitable workplace accommodations.

About the speaker:

Abigail Dumes is a medical and cultural anthropologist and an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan whose research explores the intersectional dimensions of complex chronic conditions. Her first book, Divided Bodies: Lyme Disease, Contested Illness, and Evidence-Based Medicine, was published by Duke University Press in 2020, and she is currently conducting research on Long COVID, work, and disability among University of Michigan-Ann Arbor faculty and staff.

For the sixth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Nathaniel Darling (University of Cambridge). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 12 March at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk:

This talk presents work conducted jointly with Henrik Salje. The 1918 influenza pandemic was marked by unusually high mortality among young adults. The immune-imprinting hypothesis explains this pattern as a cohort effect arising from antigenic mismatch: individuals first exposed in childhood to influenza strains dissimilar to the 1918 virus were less protected and therefore experienced higher mortality. We test this hypothesis by examining age-specific mortality patterns across the pandemics of 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. Using long-run, cause- and age-specific mortality data for a panel of countries, we estimate excess mortality for each age group and each pandemic year within a consistent framework, and reconstruct cohort-level measures of antigenic mismatch based on historical circulation. Initial results suggest that imprinting mismatch captures important elements of the observed age patterns, yet the fit remains incomplete, pointing to additional mechanisms beyond imprinting that shaped pandemic mortality.

About the speaker:

Nathaniel Darling is a PhD student based in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure (CAMPOP). His research seeks to model the infectious disease dynamics shaping historical mortality patterns. 

For the fifth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Won-tak Joo (University of Florida). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 26 February at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk:

Previous studies have documented the health and socioeconomic disadvantages associated with in-utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic. Utilizing mortality records from Social Security Numident data, which cover nearly all deaths in the United States between 1988 and 2005, this study estimates the effects of in-utero pandemic exposure on old-age mortality. Baseline results indicate a longevity reduction of 0.2 years among males born in 1919 compared to those born between 1915-1918 or 1920-1922. However, when restricting the sample to individuals born in 1919 or earlier and incorporating sibling fixed effects, the longevity disadvantage is more pronounced for females (ß = -2.3, p < 0.01) than for males (ß = -1.4, p < 0.1). The effects of in-utero exposure, weighted by city-level influenza intensity, reveal similar patterns. I assess the robustness of these findings using data from crowd-sourced genealogy datasets, which include mortality records from young to old ages, and discuss potential mechanisms that may explain the long-term mortality consequences of the pandemic.

About the speaker:

Won-tak Joo is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Florida. His interests are in social demography, social networks, and computational sociology. His current projects explore (1) socioeconomic differences in social network changes during later-life transitions (e.g., disease diagnosis, retirement), and (2) the individual and family consequences of epidemics using large genealogy and census datasets.

For the fourth Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Lone Simonsen (PandemiX Center). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 12 February at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk:

When a new pandemic virus emerges in a naive population, the only control options are nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) until vaccines or effective treatments become available. Here, we report on the Danish suppression strategy and use of a combination of NPIs with a notable absence of extremely strict measures (such as stay-at-home orders). Only 7% of Danes were infected (serological evidence) in the first year of the pandemic, compared with 50% in Lombardy in the first wave alone. This low attack rate was accomplished by initial rapid intervention with a free-of-charge mass testing program beginning in October 2020, a strong digital data infrastructure, timely contact tracing and voluntary home isolation, real-time reporting of surveillance data, and a high degree of public trust. The individual contribution of each NPI to the pandemic control is difficult to assess; yet, evidence points to the mass testing program as being particularly effective in removing infected individuals from the pool. In January 2021, vaccines became available, and 96% of Danes over 50 years of age were vaccinated twice with an mRNA vaccine by summer. On February 1, 2022, while facing the Omicron variant and with the older adult newly boosted, Denmark became the first country to drop all NPIs. A few months later, 70% of the population had been infected with the Omicron variant, showing the SARS-CoV-2 transmission potential when unmitigated. Denmark was only close to intensive care unit capacity during the second wave in winter 2020-2021, when 5% of the population was infected. In conclusion, the effectiveness of the combined NPIs is evident due to the low ( < 10%) attack rate in the first two waves before vaccines became available, far from the experience of unmitigated COVID-19 in Lombardy in spring 2020, with a 50% attack rate and catastrophic levels of severe morbidity and mortality.

You can read the full paper here: A disease suppression strategy in action: The impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the COVID-19 pandemic in Denmark – ScienceDirect

About the speaker:

Lone Simonsen is a Professor of Population Health Sciences, at the Department of Science and Environment at Roskilde University. Her research is highly interdisciplinary and involves colleagues and methodologies from fields ranging from history to mathematics. Over the past 25 years she has worked internationally as an epidemiologist and researcher. She is the center leader of PandemiX Center of Excellence (Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Pandemic Signatures), supported by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF).

For the third Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Ulrik Hvid (PandemiX Center and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 5 February at the normal time (16:00 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.

Blurb:

Over the summer of 2022, an outbreak of clade IIb mpox swept the globe, but then seemed to fade as quickly as it had arrived. The disease was heavily concentrated among men who have sex with men and had a high comorbidity with HIV, indicating risky sexual behavior. What happened? Did the risk-group get immunized? Did the fear of infection lead risk groups into abstinence? Did the smallpox vaccine save us?

You can read the full paper here: Relationship dynamics and behavioral adaptations in the control of the 2022 mpox epidemic | PNAS

Bio:

Ulrik Hvid is a PhD student at the PandemiX Center and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Trained in biophysics at the Niels Bohr Institute, he uses the methods of network science and complexity theory to understand the dynamics of disease spread.

For the second Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Lieke Fleur Heupink (Akershus University Hospital). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 29th January at the normal time (16:00 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.

About the talk

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted healthcare delivery globally, forcing hospital administrators to make difficult ad hoc decisions about postponing or cancelling elective care to ensure adequate capacity for COVID-19 patients. This resulted in missed care and increased waiting times for health services across many countries. While various data-driven models were developed during the pandemic to assist decision makers, most focussed on transmission dynamics and the potential effects from infection prevention and control measures. Although these models provided valuable insight into slowing the spread of disease – buying hospitals more time to prepare – they were not tailored to the unique contexts of individual hospitals. Leveraging facility-level data presents unique opportunities to provide hospital-specific predictions that administrators need for operational planning. This locally gathered hospital data can be used to build analytical models accounting for the diversity within their catchment areas. However, smaller sample sizes at the local level may introduce methodological challenges. Using COVID-19 data from a Norwegian hospital as case study, this research explores how hospital-level data can be utilized to develop tools that provide timely and actionable information to decision makers at individual hospitals, ultimately enhancing their preparedness during future pandemics.

About the Speaker

Lieke Fleur Heupink is a PhD researcher at the Health Service Research Department at Akershus University Hospital and the University of Oslo. She applies epidemiological and health economics methods to analyse COVID-19 data with the aim to strengthen hospital preparedness and response.

For the first Pandemics & Society Seminar of our Spring 2026 series we are pleased to welcome Sanjay Gyawali (Akershus University Hospital). The seminar will be held on Thursday, 22th January 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.

About the talk

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed significant gaps in global preparedness. As we navigate the recovery phase, the risk of future pandemics remains one of the most pressing challenges to global safety. During the pandemic, a wide range of control measures were implemented worldwide, often with limited evidence of their effectiveness. In the project “Lessons from pandemic”, we investigate the effectiveness and impact of these measures—the key strategies employed by governments in response to the pandemic—from multiple perspectives through a comprehensive analysis of various sources of COVID-19 data from different regions in Norway. Our objective is to identify optimal strategies that mitigate health risks and minimize unnecessary social and economic burdens. Ultimately, we aim to transform the insights gained from the COVID-19 experience into actionable strategies that strengthen preparedness for future health crises. In my talk, I will present preliminary findings from this ongoing project.

About the Speaker

Sanjay Gyawali is a PhD candidate at the Health Services Research Unit (HØKH), Akershus University Hospital. Gyawali  has a background in epidemiology and has a Master of Philosophy (MPhil)  in Global Health from the University of Bergen. He is currently working on a project to prepare for the next pandemic.