Comics in the time of COVID-19: Tracking data on web-based comics and evaluating their potential for communicating public health messages

About the project Our pandemic lives are deeply entwined with visual, web-based public health messages, from instructional hand-washing pictograms to infographics about R numbers. Alongside these official public health communications, people have created thousands of web-based comics conveying public health messages. In 2021 this Bournemouth University-based research team collected a sample of over 15,000 ‘COVID […]

Infodemic: Combatting COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories

About the project A direct response to the warning of the World Health Organisation at the start of the pandemic about the dangers of misinformation, this project studied how and why conspiracy theories spread in the online environment. Scraping conspiracy theory posts from the main social media platforms, digital methods were used to identify key […]

Making it FAIR: Understanding the Lockdown ‘Digital Divide’ and the Implications for the Development of UK Digital Infrastructures

About the project This project examined how small museums can address the challenges of engaging with audiences online in lockdown and beyond, in such a way that new digital content generated is sustainable and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Resuable). Researchers conducted an action-based research study with a cohort of 8 small museums; they received training, […]

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The Arts and Humanities Contribution to Covid-19 Research and Recovery: a snapshot

by Pascale Aebischer, Des Fitzgerald, Sarah Hartley, Rachael Nicholas and Victoria Tischler In this blog post, we present a snapshot of what we have learned about the distinctive Arts and Humanities contribution to Covid-19 research and recovery and the positive impacts this research has had on society, culture, health and decision-making. The Pandemic and Beyond team has reached the end of the phase of work dedicated to bringing the researchers […]

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Digital dissemination and visual communication in the time of COVID-19

Digital and visual communications are a crucial method in disseminating information during the COVID-19 pandemic. From slice-of-life diary pieces to public health information on guidance and symptoms, visual storytellers are using their platforms to share their stories and disseminate information. While digital platforms have the capacity to facilitate misinformation, they have also been utilised to […]

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Research on Museums and Collections in the Pandemic

A central aim of the Pandemic and Beyond project is to connect researchers working on similar Covid-19 research problems so that projects can share knowledge, data and findings. Our first Knowledge Exchange Workshops were key to achieving this, bringing team members from each research cluster together to present their work and to discuss the connections […]

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The Pandemic and Beyond Plan: Connect, Coordinate, Amplify

We are now approaching three months of working on the Pandemic and Beyond project; our activities started at breakneck speed, and our work of coordinating, connecting and amplifying Arts and Humanities Covid-19 research is well underway. This blog post provides a brief overview of what we have been doing and looks forward to our plans […]

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The Pandemic And Beyond: The Arts and Humanities Contribution To Covid-19 Research and Recovery

Reposted from the AHRC Arts and Minds Blog. It is a year since the UK government announced the first lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, arts and humanities researchers have contributed significantly to tackling some of the major challenges caused by the pandemic. A new two-year project, The Pandemic and Beyond: The Arts […]

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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Like a new beginning: a message of hope, inspiration and community from the Pandemic and Beyond Lived Experience Panel

Dr Karen Gray records the reflections of the Lived Experience Panel members, who have been helping shape Pandemic & Beyond’s approach to research and public engagement. They discuss contributing to ongoing, urgent research initiatives and what lies ahead for creative research. From its earliest moments, the Pandemic & Beyond team has benefitted from the skills […]