Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC)

On Thursday, 19 January, at 1600 CET, Taylor P. van Doren, Sitka Sound Science Center, will present: “Risk perception, resilience, and future population health challenges due to COVID-19 in Southeast Alaska.”

It has been broadly observed that Indigenous communities worldwide suffer greater negative outcomes than non-Indigenous populations in the same region, but there has not been a lot of work to elevate the experiences of experiencing a pandemic from the perspective of Indigenous people themselves. Over the course of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Sitka Sound Science Center and its collaborators, the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and the RAND Corporation, collected 22 in-depth interviews with Alaska Native individuals from three island communities in Southeast Alaska to better understand how these people (and their towns) perceived the risks of the COVID-19 pandemic and how they leaned on culturally-grounded, community-centered behaviors to mitigate those risks and display considerable resilience in the face of the pandemic threat. Through additional original data sources gathered during the course of the pandemic, I will explore some of the quantitative data that supports the ethnographic research, and think about paths forward for community-centered pandemic research in rural Southeast Alaska to expand our knowledge of how people experience pandemics.

Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

We are so pleased that the PANSOC webinar series continues to be successful and will return next semester! As usual, they will be held on Thursdays at 1600 CET (Oslo time). See below for dates, speakers and tentative titles, and contact jessicad@oslomet.no for the zoom link.

Speakers:

19 January: Taylor P. van Doren, Sitka Sound Science Center: “Risk perception, resilience, and future population health challenges due to COVID-19 in Southeast Alaska.”

2 February: Marama Muru-Lanning, Associate Professor and Director of the James Henare Māori Research Centre, University of Auckland: Title TBD

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

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

16 March: Elisa Perego, University College London, “Long Covid: history, research, future challenges.”

23 March: Helga E. Bories-Sawala, University of Bremen: “The forgotten pandemic that created today’s America. A look at the history textbooks of Québec.”

30 March: Emma Tinker-Fortel, University of Missouri: Title TBD [Alaska Native mortality during the 1918 flu] Cancelled.

20 April: Courtney Heffernan, University of Alberta: “Tuberculosis in Indigenous communities in Canada – where have we come from, where are we going.”

27 April: Marcia Anderson, Vice-Dean, Indigenous Health, University of Manitoba: Title TBD.

On 1 December at 1600 CET, Tobias A. Jopp and Mark Spoerer, University of Regensburg, will present “Tracing the temporal and spatial course of the Spanish flu in Germany.” Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

Abstract: Compared to its tremendous impact, the Spanish flu of 1918-20 is notoriously poorly studied. Based on newly collected mortality data specifically for the female population (not “contaminated” by battlefield casualties), we calculate monthly all-cause excess mortality for the first three waves of the pandemic for 42 German regions. We define a measure of the intensity of the Spanish flu’s incidence on the regional level and examine various impact factors in a regression framework which include distance from the Western Front (from where the flu came), population density, agricultural labour share, female labour force participation in the industrial sector, and density of the railway network.

This will be the last webinar this semester, but stay tuned for next semester’s calendar!

Catch up on the latest two PANSOC webinars:

Heather Battles, The University of Auckland, “A historical syndemic? Measles and scarlet fever in goldfields-era Victoria”:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wGDnk0bHbdKqzZTMVBrVLW8GZkZZx8Dy/view?usp=share_link

Esyllt Jones, University of Manitoba, “Contested Concepts of Borders and Containment in the Great Influenza Pandemic Era in Canada” :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yCbJfDJqvSsxpYHgtX1r4gDmAJTSBXFc/view?usp=sharing

Other past videos can be found here:

New webinar video links