COVID-19 Archives | OUPblog

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After the Black Death

The Black Death: how did the world’s deadliest pandemic change society?

By Mark Bailey

COVID-19 has ignited global interest in past pandemics, and the Black Death of 1346-53 is the worst in recorded history. Recent research has transformed our understanding of this lethal disease, which coincided with environmental stress and rapid climate change. But in the long term it proved a watershed in human history, triggering a range of institutional, economic, and social changes that opened up the route to liberal modernity.

Open Access – Episode 58 – The Oxford Comment [podcast]

By Steven Filippi

Should academic research be available to everyone? How should such a flow of information be regulated? Why would the accessibility of information ever be controversial? Our topic today is Open Access (OA), the movement defined in the early 2000s to ensure the free access to and reuse of academic research on the Internet.

Global Environmental Politics: Understanding the Governance of the Earth

COVID-19 and pollution: double standards, quadruple bias

By Jean-Frédéric Morin

The difference between policy responses to COVID-19 and to environmental crises is striking. When faced with the pandemic, governments around the world (with a few notable exceptions) adopted draconian measures to limit the disaster. These measures are not inconsequential: it will take years to reduce unemployment and the public debt. Yet, they were sacrifices considered necessary to protect public health.

Annals of Work Exposures and Health

Droplets, aerosols and COVID-19: updating the disease transmission paradigm

By Rachael Jones

The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent torrent of research has brought a simmering debate about how respiratory infectious diseases are transmitted to a boil, in full view of the public. The words airborne, aerosol, and droplets are now part of the daily news—but, why?

OUP Libraries

The socially distanced library: staying connected in a pandemic

By Femi Cadmus

The concept of a socially distanced library would be considered the ultimate antithesis of the modern-day library. The past two decades have witnessed the evolution of the library from a mostly traditional space of quiet study and research into a bustling collaborative, social space and technology center.

Urban Studies, city life, and COVID-19 [podcast]

By Steven Filippi

Oxford Bibliographies celebrates its 10th anniversary this year; in a decade, OBO has grown from 10 subject areas to over 40, and this fall will see the introduction of a new subject area that is highly relevant to our COVID-19-afflicted times: Oxford Bibliographies in Urban Studies.

How communities can help stop COVID-19

By Ted Lankester

What impact will COVID-19 have on the world? We will be confronting the genius of COVID-19 for a long time and in many ways. At the time of writing this, coronavirus is increasing its multiple harms day on day. The world peak and many more national and regional peaks have not yet been reached. We […]

Nine titles on the frontiers of psychology research [reading list]

By Sarah Butcher

What is the responsibility of psychologists to their clients and their communities during times of crisis? Annually, the American Psychological Association meets to present the research and best practices to meet the needs of the profession and the broader world. These nine new titles present the latest, most advanced research to create a bridge between […]

How COVID-19 could help social science researchers

By Anne Nassauer and Nicolas M. Legewie

The US passed 2.5 million Covid-19 cases, there are more than 10 million confirmed cases worldwide, and global deaths passed 500,000 at the end of June. We face unprecedented challenges during this global pandemic and we may see profound and permanent changes to how we do things. Surveys and digital trace data have been used […]

How we experience pandemic time

By Beryl Pong

COVID-19 refers not only to a virus, but to the temporality of crisis. We live “in times of COVID” or “corona time.” We yearn for the “Before Time” and prepare for the “After Time.” Where earlier assessments of pandemic time focused on rupture, we are now reckoning with an open-ended, uncertain future. This endeavour would […]

The emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on teenagers

By Carol Landau

A growing body of evidence supports my clinical experience that younger people, high schoolers especially, are having more psychological problems during the pandemic than adults. There are many reasons for this. Adolescents are in the developmental stage of forming a new social world away from their parents. Social needs tend to dominate their lives and yet currently […]

Why global crises are political, not scientific, problems

By Robert Garner

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize he was awarded in 2007, Al Gore, the former American Vice President, made the claim that “the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.” The reason why Gore does not see climate change as a political […]

What history can tell us about infectious diseases

By John Ashton

One of the remarkable achievements of the past hundred years has been the reduction of the global toll of death from infectious disease. The combination of applied biological science, improved living and working conditions, and standards of living, together with the benefits of planned parenthood, have transformed the health landscape for millions of people, not […]

How after school music programs have adapted to online music playing

By Amy Nathan

“OrchKids is working hard to stay ahead of the curve!” That’s the message delivered this spring to friends and supporters of OrchKids, a free after-school music instruction program for more than 2,000 Baltimore students, pre-K through high school. In March 2020, OrchKids staff had to totally change their way of teaching. The public schools where they […]

How working from home is changing our economy forever

By Ariadna Estévez

The virus lurks on car door handles, on doorknobs and the floor, on the breath of others or in a friend’s hug, on onions in the supermarket, and on the hands of the valet who parks your car. If you venture outside, everything and everyone is a threat. So, it is better to stay home, […]

Quantitative thinking during a pandemic

By Steven J. Osterlind

Today is not right. The weather is fine. My family and friends are healthy and waiting to hear from me, ready for ordinary things like coffee and conversation. Normally, I’d be taking my grandkids to daycare and checking up on grocery and laundry lists. Then, a bit of reading and some writing. But, instead of […]