Online event: Pandemic mitigation and crisis management
24 Mar 2021
Lecturer in Sociology Dr Elisa Pieri will present her research on 20 April at 1pm
This talk is based on Dr. Pieri's research investigating pandemic preparedness and its social aspects and draws on her new book 'Pandemics' (2021). In this talk, she will discuss how drawing on sociological knowledge, alongside medical and other knowledges already mobilised in pandemic planning, may contribute to securing socially resilient and robust solutions under conditions of radical uncertainty. She makes the case for moving towards participatory crisis governance and for broadening landscapes of participation before and during pandemics.
The current outbreak of COVID-19 is a stark reminder of our permanent exposure to risk of pandemic outbreaks. To prepare and respond more effectively to pandemics we need to put in place mechanisms for decision making that are procedurally fair, inclusive of all relevant knowledge (notably, sociological and social science knowledge, alongside medical knowledge and other logistic and command-and-control expertise) and involve an all-of-society approach. Understanding and studying societal and ethical impacts of pandemic preparedness and response are key contributors to achieving better and more socially robust mitigation. Pandemic measures have unequal impacts on different groups of people, and different groups of people need to be involved in debating (including ahead of an outbreak) and co-shaping the mitigation strategies to be deployed.