Bereavement Rituals During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Implications for Mental Health Support, Funerary Practices and Public Health Messaging

About the project This project explored the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic dislocated significant rituals and practices around death and dying. Through qualitative research with bereaved families and with funeral directors, the research team sought to investigate the impact on mental health, on adherence to public health guidelines, and on the planning and delivery […]

British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19

About the project BRIC-19 studied the creative adaptations made by diverse religious, faith and belief, and local communities across the UK. The project aimed to harness and share this learning to identify and understand the social benefits of ritual in the pandemic and nurture the work of ritual in British society moving forward. They worked […]

A National Day of Reflection: Lessons from past memorialisation initiatives and attitudes in the present

About the project The question of when and how to memorialise the pandemic and those who have died from COVID-19 or during periods of social restriction has inspired ongoing and sometimes difficult discussion. This project focused on the evolution of those arguments and debates as they unfolded in 2020/2021. It incorporated historical expertise on civic […]

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The Pandemic and the Future of Arts and Humanities Research

Blakeney Clark is a final year English Literature undergraduate at Exeter University. She has been working as a student intern on the Pandemic & Beyond project media team, specialising in social media engagement. In this blog, she offers her perspective on the future of arts and humanities research as one of the ‘next generation’ emerging […]

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Pandemic & Beyond Response to Draft Terms of Reference for the UK COVID-19 Inquiry

Submitted 7 April 2022. This response to the COVID-19 inquiry draft terms of reference consultation is based on evidence drawn from a meta-analysis and ethics review of pandemic impact research, which has been jointly commissioned by the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator and Pandemic & Beyond, two UKRI/AHRC funded initiatives. The review is intended for submission […]

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The Digital Beyond. Has COVID-19 transformed digital memorialisation?

Dr Eleanor O’Keeffe worked as Post Doctoral Research Associate on the AHRC funded project British Ritual Innovation under COVID-19. Here, she discusses some of her research into digital adoption in response to the pandemic. Sequoia Nagamatsu’s 2022 novel How High We Go in the Dark, which was started before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, offers us […]

Places and Communities

The challenges of the pandemic have often demanded local and place-based responses that can speak directly to the needs of particular communities.  Through Arts and Humanities research, we now know more about the way in which local cultural ecologies and infrastructures function, including how these have been impacted by the crisis. Studies have emphasised the […]

Guidance, Messaging and Behaviour Change

Arts and Humanities research during the pandemic has been vital in helping us understand how public health messages are received within different communities, how communication platforms affect interpretation and reach, and how effective messaging can combat misinformation and build public trust.  Researchers have investigated how rumours and conspiracy theories originate, how they spread and the […]

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

The pandemic has highlighted systemic inequalities across society. An interest in exploring and addressing these has been explicit in or threaded through many of the AHRC-funded COVID-19 studies.  Researchers have explored how public health messaging might better reach different communities. They have also shone a spotlight on experiences of racism for people working in the […]

Arts & Health and Wellbeing

Arts and humanities research during the COVID-19 pandemic has addressed issues of direct relevance for the support of individual, social and community health, mental health and wellbeing.  Findings show that during the pandemic, the social care sector and the NHS have been able to access, benefit and learn from community assets and resources, including those […]