At PANSOC we now have a Call for Expression of Interest for a joint application in pandemic studies under the EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme – Call: MSCA-PF-2022.
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.”
In this invited paper for the 75 years of Population Studies diamond anniversary special issue, Svenn-Erik Mamelund and Jessica Dimka discuss the mechanisms (differential exposure, susceptibility, and consequences) underlying the mortality and morbidity disparities by socio-economic status and race/ethnicity in the 1918 flu and COVID-19 pandemics, emphasizing the tendency of pandemics to inflate pre-existing health disparities through these means. The authors use both historical and contemporary data and they make the case for thinking about the reduction of health disparities as an important pandemic preparedness strategy. Read full paper here:
Christina Stylegar Torjussen er masterstudent ved Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge med Ole Georg Moseng som veileder, og Christina er også assosiert med PANSOC på OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. Hun skriver en svært spennede masteroppgave om utbrudd av spanskesyken på Kong-Sverre hvor andelen av de syke rekruttene som døde var 27 prosent mens samme andelen blant unge voksne sivile var 2 prosent. Les mer her:
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.”
Congratulations to PANSOC Centre Leader Svenn-Erik Mamelund, who has (for the second year) been nominated as Name of the Year in Academia by readers of Khrono. Read more here.