The Covid-19 Pandemic as a world-historical event
The Covid-19 Pandemic as a world-historical event
Conference internationale accueillie par la British Academy, Londres - 2 et 3 juillet 2026 - Lien visio disponible ultérieurement
inscriptions en ligne. https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/british-academy-conferences/the-covid-19-pandemic-as-a-world-historical-event/
This conference shifts the focus on Covid-19 from a public health crisis to its status as a transformative historical event. Bringing together specialists from India, six African countries, Europe, and the United States, the conference provides a rare opportunity to develop a truly global and comprehensive understanding of the pandemic’s experiences and consequences. Speakers include medical practitioners working in community-based medicine in India, alongside experts in medicine and global health, economic modelling, sociology and the media, biopolitics, the history of science and technology, and senior medical officials.
By examining both differences and commonalities between experiences in the Global North and the Global South, the conference fosters an interdisciplinary and collaborative global historical perspective. This collective approach offers insight into the profound social, economic, and human impacts of Covid-19 and illuminates the ways in which the pandemic represented a significant rupture in contemporary life.
This is an interdisciplinary conference which proceeds from the assumption that scholars from a wide range of specialisations have important insights into the COVID-19 experience - medical doctors, public health experts, historians, economists, sociologists, political scientists, and practitioners of medical ethics and public health ethics, among others. This follows the WHO's own definition of health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
Conference convenor
- Toby Green FBA, Kings College London
- Juliette Rouchier, Université Aix-Marseille
- Reginald Oduor, University of Nairobi
- T. Sundararaman, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER)