As the global ecological crisis deepens and spreads through virus, fire and flood, Elly Robson introduces a new HWO series on The Political Environment. How have politics shaped the way we identify ecological problems and solutions, and how…
What can the medieval face mask tell us about the role that medical face coverings play, not only in prevention of illness, but also as a signifier of identities and anxieties? Sadegh Attari explores how medical, cultural, and religious…
'I have felt a chill of recognition'. Matt Cook interrogates the emotional resonances invoked by Channel 4’s TV drama serial 'It’s A Sin' and what this means for the recognition of memories of grief in suspension.
This opening article in the 'Whose Streets?' feature considers what it means to live through the jarring collapse of public life in the midst of a pandemic and how this moment might stimulate new radical histories of the urban commons.
Amidst the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic it seems that virtual conferences are here to stay. In the first half of this post, PhD student Ed DeVane reflects on the experience of ‘doing’ an online event. The second half of this…
A series of 'in conversation' events exploring the many historical perspectives through which we can view, and better understand, the current coronavirus pandemic.
Writing History in a Drought Year.
"I want very much to write history that matters. But it should only matter for a little while:"
Editorial Fellow @menysnoweballes brings our #WritingRadically series to a close.
In commissioning this feature, editorial fellow Rachel Moss asked contributors: how can we radically re-imagine the writing of history? Over the next few weeks, our contributors reply with creative new methods, sources and forms that they…
The Black Report, a landmark critique of health inequalities that barely discussed ‘race’, turns forty today. Grace Redhead and Jesse Olszynko-Gryn investigate the legacy of the report for the age of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.
The COVID-19 pandemic sheds light on the history of "facemask diplomacy", in which contagion and epidemic become prisms through which power rivalries, tensions and aspirations are conducted – international politics wearing a facemask.
With Italy on the frontline of Europe's Coronavirus outbreak, Rosa Salzberg examines how Renaissance Venice established world-leading measures to combat the plague, strategies we are still relying on today.
Bruce Campbell argues that interactions between climate and disease during the fourteenth-century Black Death can inform insights into Covid-19 and alter historians' understanding of the nature of historical change.
What can the British provincial press tell us about the way pandemics have historically been experienced at a local level? Andrew Jackson proposes that such coverage offers vital insights into community-led responses to global public health…
What can we learn from comparing past and present sensory experiences of illness? The senses are an essential avenue through which we navigate understandings and responses to disease. Further research into how people sense illness, both…
These are exceptional times. But the dangers of solitude are a very old theme. Barbara Taylor and David Vincent reflect on the fine historical line between loneliness and solitude in light of Covid-19.
What value do the lessons of the past have in shaping strategies for managing the COVID-19 outbreak? In this article, Guillaume Lachenal and Gaëtan Thomas argue that an over-reliance on the allure of 'pandemic precedents' needs to be…
Matthew McCormack sets the UK government's response to Coronavirus in historic context, shedding some light on British responses to the Coronavirus pandemic, in contrast with the responses from other parts of the world.
