Christina Stylegar Torjussen will present: “Kong Sverre – The Death Ship”
The influenza pandemic in 1918 killed approximately 15,000 people in Norway. Among those were recruits in the Norwegian navy stationed on an exercise and accommodation ship called “Kong Sverre” outside Horten, Norway. Of the 500 recruits on the ship, 158 were infected and 42 died, corresponding to a lethality of 27%. In my master thesis (to be presented in May 2022), I try to figure out the reasons for this high mortality on “Kong Sverre”. In my talk, I present in-progress findings on possible mechanisms for the experiences on the ship.
Christina Stylegar Torjussen is a student at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an affiliated master student at PANSOC. She is currently working on her master thesis in history.
We are delighted to announce the spring webinar series. All talks will be held Thursdays at 1600 CET unless otherwise noted. Please contact jessicad@oslomet.no if you need a link.
27 January: Christina Torjussen, University of South-Eastern Norway and PANSOC, “Kong Sverre – The Death Ship.”
3 February: Chinmay Tumbe, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, “India and 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Mortality Estimates and Correlates.”
10 February: Binoy Kampmark, RMIT University Melbourne, “‘Killing cockroaches with a nuclear weapon’: The Victorian Pandemic Management Bill.”
24 February, 1400 CET: David Roth, The Australian National University, “The effects of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic on mental patients in New South Wales – Work-In-Progress.”
10 March: Tamara Giles-Vernick, Institut Pasteur: “Complex local vulnerabilities and the COVID-19 pandemic in France.” (Rescheduled from fall)
17 March: Margarida Pereira, PANSOC, “The 2020 Syndemic of Obesity and COVID-19 in an Urbanized World.”
31 March: Lianne Tripp, University of Northern British Columbia: “The 1918/19 Influenza: Hidden Heterogeneity in an Island Population.” (Rescheduled from fall)
7 April: Amanda Wissler, University of South Carolina & Cleveland Museum of Natural History, “The Long-Term Impacts of Pandemic Disease: Health and Survival after the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.”
21 April: Jord Hanus, University of Antwerp, “Socioeconomic Status and Epidemic Mortality in an Urban Environment: Mechelen (Belgium), 1600-1900”
28 April: Vibeke Narverud Nyborg, University of South-Eastern Norway and PANSOC, The exploration of state health legislations as possible driving forces to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the 1918 pandemic in different Norwegian regions.”
5 May: Ben Schneider, TBA
12 May: Carolyn Orbann, University of Missouri, “Co-circulating respiratory diseases at the end of the 1918 influenza pandemic.”
Join us December 16 at 1600 CET to hear John Eicher present “A Digital History Approach to Analyzing Memories of the 1918 Flu Pandemic.” (contact jessicad@oslomet.no if you need a link)
Humanistic accounts of the 1918 influenza pandemic generally fall under two categories: socio-cultural histories that rely on journalistic and artistic sources and political/administrative histories that rely on government and bureaucratic sources. Both approaches overwhelmingly focus on urban populations and are framed at the regional or national levels. Working with a collection of nearly 1,000 first-hand accounts of the 1918 flu gathered from across 10 countries, my project, “The Sword Outside, the Plague Within,” aims to be the first transnational socio-cultural history of the pandemic in the European context. This presentation provides an overview of the digital tools and methods that I am using to gather data from the letters, and it demonstrates how researchers can use quantitative digital history techniques for qualitative analysis.
John Eicher is an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Pennsylvania State University at Altoona. Focusing on the comparative and transnational, his research focuses on the movements of people and diseases around the world. His current project, “The Sword Outside, the Plague Within: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Europe,” compares the cultural impact of the 1918 flu across ten European countries using over 1,000 first-hand survivors’ accounts. This work was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, Penn State University and the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, where he served as a Marie S. Curie Junior Fellow during the 2020-21 academic year.
Catch up on the latest webinar with Madeleine Mant from the University of Toronto Mississauga, who presented “Going Viral: COVID-19 and Risk in Young Adult Health Behaviour Models.”
Madeleine Mant, University of Toronto Mississauga: “Going Viral: COVID-19 and Risk in Young Adult Health Behaviour Models.”
This talk will explore the University of Toronto COVID-19 Student Survey, the first in Canada to capture survey and interview data concerning youths’ reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study tracks students’ self-reported anxiety, media use, effects of social distancing on their lives and educational experience, health behaviours, vaccine confidence, and their contextualization of the pandemic through time using iterative surveys and semi-structured interviews. The first survey opened on March 20, 2020, four days after the University of Toronto cancelled all in-person undergraduate classes. Subsequent surveys and interviews were completed three, six, 12, and 18 months after the closure of the university, allowing for longitudinal investigation of students’ impressions of this public health crisis.
Dr. Madeleine Mant is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Her research focuses on the lived experience of trauma and infectious disease through time, drawing upon bioarchaeological, archival, and modern qualitative datasets.
Two of PANSOC’S masters students presented their work. Carla Louise Hughes presented on “The Association between the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Suicide Rates in Norway” while Lara Maria Dora Steinmetz presented on “Vaccine hesitancy in Eastern Oslo during COVID-19: Associated sociodemographic factors and subsequent reasons.”
Watch yesterday’s webinar, “Social Inequality and Pandemic Mortality: the Biosocial Context of the 14th-Century Black Death” with Sharon DeWitte, here:
At the next webinar (18 November, 1600 CET), two Master’s students affiliated with PANSOC will talk about their theses. Contact jessicad@oslomet.no if you need a link.
Carla Louise Hughes: “The Association between the 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Suicide Rates in Norway.”
In this talk I will discuss my master’s thesis topic regarding the association between the 1918 flu pandemic and suicide rates in Norway, between the years 1910-1920. Due to Norway’s neutral standpoint during WW1, there was no requirement to control for WW1 deaths. Therefore, this research pushes the front as it is the first attempt to explore this association in a neutral context.
Lara Maria Dora Steinmetz: “Vaccine hesitancy in Eastern Oslo during COVID-19: Associated sociodemographic factors and subsequent reasons.”
Now that the long awaited vaccines against COVID-19 have arrived, we rely on sufficient vaccine uptake in order to contain the spread of the virus. In this regard, vaccine hesitancy is paramount. Vaccine hesitancy can be understood as either the delayed acceptance or refusal of a vaccine despite its availability. Eastern Oslo has experienced disproportionately high infection rates throughout the lifespan of the current pandemic, which emphasizes the importance of vaccine coverage in this particular area. Vaccine hesitancy is however yet to be addressed. This study therefore aims to add to this knowledge, by identifying sociodemographic predictors and subsequent reasons for vaccine hesitancy.
If you missed the 28 October webinar with Hampton Gaddy, you can watch “Re-estimating the global and national death tolls of the 1918-20 pandemic: Updating Johnson and Mueller (2002)” here:
