In conversation with Dr Erica Charters and Robin Gorna

How have societies responded to pandemics, throughout the world, and throughout time? What are the new narratives, meanings and cultures that emerge and shape emerging realities? As this conversation will remind us, there is no simple answer to the problem of disease – but disease is also far more than a medical or scientific problem. Robin Gorna will draw on her experiences with social movements and cultural responses to AIDS since the 1980s, which brought hope and massive social change in the midst of rage and death. She will discuss the many connections between the two pandemics – of cultural change, politics and people and emerging narratives, with reflections on her current experience of living with Covid-19 in her own body. Erica Charters will discuss a just-published special issue of Centaurus on ‘The history of epidemics in the time of COVID-19’, reflecting on how the discipline of the history of science and medicine has responded to the current pandemic. Sharing historical approaches to understanding disease, she will explore how historians have framed pandemics and what a long-term context might offer for our understanding of COVID-19.

Read more here: torch.web.ox.ac.uk/event/in-conversation-with-wes-williams-robin-gorna-and-erica-charters