By Brianne Wenning, Lisa Dikomitis, Kay Polidano and Christian Mallen, Keele University   ‘We certainly FaceTime or Houseparty our daughters so we can see the grandchildren. We chat every day with them. So that can be half an hour or however long we’ve got’. The 73-year-old woman, living in England (UK), shared her experiences of the […]

By Anindita Chatterjee, Postdoctoral Research Assistant, Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University Anamika landed in Dubai on an October 2020 afternoon, and called her mother, Arpita, to let her know about her safe arrival.[1] Anamika’s brother, Mainak, resides in Pune. Arpita is 67 and her husband Manoshij is 77. Despite their old age, they preferred to live […]

By Kristina Grünenberg, Line Hillersdal and Jonas Winther, Department of Anthropology and Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen. In this blogpost, we draw from our current fieldwork on the island of Ærø, a place which has branded itself as “the digital island”[1], to explore how care workers tinker with screens during the COVID-19 pandemic […]

By Jonah S. Rubin and Abby Holloway, Knox College In February 2020, as public health authorities struggled to develop guidance for a rapidly spreading coronavirus, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros declared: “We’re not just fighting an epidemic, we’re fighting an infodemic” (WHO 2020a). In response, the WHO quickly put together a team of “mythbusters” dedicated to […]

By Amy Clotworthy and Rudi G.J. Westendorp Center for Healthy Aging (CEHA), Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen The COVID-19 pandemic has presented us with a unique opportunity to examine how societies perceive urgent biological risk, and how they manage population groups who may be susceptible to such risks (cf. Alaszewski 2015). When the World […]