Pandemic and Beyond

Dr Pascale Aebischer speaks to Professor Elizabeth Crooke, Professor Heritage and Museum Studies at Ulster University, about her project Museums Crisis and Covid-19. The project explores the difficulties faced by the sector during the pandemic and how museums can contribute to community resilience and wellbeing during times of crisis. They are joined by Roisin Doherty, curator-manager of the Tower Museum Derry who shares her experience of finding new strategies to engage audiences in a pandemic and post-pandemic environment. You can learn more about the project here. 

In this podcast, Dr Eleanor O’Keeffe speaks to Dr Sarah Gong, who has worked closely with Chinese communities in the UK to understand the determinants that shape vaccine hesitancy and facilitate uptake. They are joined by Circle Steele, the CEO of the Wai Yin Society, which supports socially excluded and marginalised women in the North West of England. They talk about participatory and co-creative research processes, the benefits of long-term research partnerships, and reflect on the experiences of Chinese communities during the pandemic. The research informed series of creative interventions to generate greater understanding about the vaccination programme within Chinese communities in England, which are discussed during the podcast. You can view some of the interventions created for the research on the project’s YouTube Channel. Transcript available here.

Prof Ellie O'Keefe talks to Dr David McMenemy (University of Glasgow) + Nick Poole (CEO of CILIP, the UK's library and information association) about the impact of the Pandemic on libraries and the wellbeing of its staff. They discuss Dr McMenemy's brilliant project 'Downloading a New Normal' and its implications on privacy, freedom of access to information + information behaviour as library services pivot to the digital.

Poetry has a long history of challenging established structures and provoking change – it also has offered comfort in times of difficulty and disaster.  The Poetry and COVID-19 project has aimed to use poetry to think through the pandemic and move forward from our experiences. In this podcast Dr Lorna Hardy talks to Professor Anthony Caleshu (University of Plymouth) and Associate Professor Rory Waterman (Nottingham Trent University) about collaborating with poets and how poetry has brought people together in the pandemic.

Dr Pascale Aebischer talks to Dr Helen Williams who has been working with Dr David Rudrum to examine the impact of the pandemic on the literary house heritage sector in the UK. They are joined by Patrick Wildgust, the Curator of Shandy Hall (managed by the Laurence Stern Trust), about how these smaller literary heritage sites responded to COVID-19, the pivot to the digital, and their growing local and community significances under lockdown.