Doing History in Public

Tag: coronavirus

  • Apocalypse Then: what would past ages have made of COVID-19?

    Apocalypse Then: what would past ages have made of COVID-19?

    By Sam Harrison (@seph1812) As the implications of COVID-19 became clear last month, many of us began to ask why we had not done more to prepare for it: we had known for some time that the virus had the potential to become a pandemic, and for years experts had been warning successive British governments…

  • Art in the Time of Coronavirus

    Art in the Time of Coronavirus

    By Zara Kesterton (@ZaraKesterton) 15 March 2020: we were beginning to realise just how much of an impact the coronavirus pandemic would have on all our lives. One of my friends messaged a group chat, ‘Now that we aren’t allowed to touch anything ever again does it spell the end of material culture? Is the…

  • ‘Paying it forward’: Bonds of giving between Ireland and the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Navajo Nations from the Irish Famine to COVID-19.

    ‘Paying it forward’: Bonds of giving between Ireland and the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Navajo Nations from the Irish Famine to COVID-19.

    By Aoife O’Leary McNeice (@aolmcn) In the mid 1840s and early 1850s, Ireland was ravaged by a Famine which, through a combination of death and emigration, saw the population fall by a third. The horrors of the Famine were reported globally, and the crisis, unfolding in almost real time in the newspapers of readers worldwide prompted…

  • Levelling, enclosure, and coronavirus

    Levelling, enclosure, and coronavirus

    By Max Ashby Holme The law doth punish man or woman That steals the goose from off the common, But lets the greater felon loose That steals the common from the goose. – Excerpt from “The Goose and the Commons” (c. 17th cent.) [1] As lockdown measures in the UK are eased, we must consider…

  • Doing History in Public Year in Review: 2020

    Doing History in Public Year in Review: 2020

    By Zoë Jackson (@ZoeMJackson1) & Evelyn Strope (@emstrope) This New Year’s Eve, we look back at 2020, a year many have described as ‘unprecedented’. The coronavirus spread around the world from the start of the year, and the ensuing pandemic and resulting lockdowns have completely altered life as we knew it.