Curating the Present: Thinking Historically about the Covid-19 Pandemic

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An online roundtable event run by the History and Heritage research theme under the School-wide Crisis and Culture research theme at the School of Modern Languages.

The guest speakers will include Elen Phillips (St Fagans National Museum of History), Dr Carolin Roeder (Max Plank Institute for the History of Science), Kara Takasaki (University of Texas at Austin), Dominika Moravčíková (Charles University Prague).

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to all our lives. As historians, we face the complex task of documenting the experience of living through this global crisis. Nearly a year after the WHO first declared Covid-19 a pandemic, we ask how we might record the multifaceted, uneven and sometimes ephemeral ways in which the virus has impacted communities across the world. This roundtable brings together researchers and heritage professionals whose ongoing work will help to shape future generations’ understanding of the lived experience of Covid-19. During this discussion, we consider which documentary methods might allow us to fully explore the pandemic’s global impact and examine some of its likely historical legacies.

Moderated by Professor Hanna Diamond.

Speakers:

Elen Phillips is Principal Curator of Contemporary & Community History at St Fagans National Museum of History where she is Co-Lead of the Collecting Covid: Wales 2020 project. Her research interests include participatory curatorial practice and the collecting methodologies of St Fagans' first curator, Dr Iorwerth C. Peate. She has published widely on Welsh dress and textile crafts.

Dr Carolin Roeder is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is Co-Lead of The Mask – Arrayed Project, which explores the material, technological, and cultural aspects of the face mask, the most iconic artefact of the Covid-19 crisis. She obtained her PhD in Modern European History from Harvard University in 2017.

Kara Takasaki is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also Quantitative Survey Committee Co-Lead for the AAPI Covid-19 Project, which examines the ongoing Covid-19 crisis as it shapes the lives of Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in the United States. She studies race and gender inequality in workplaces and in personal relationships, and has recently helped to launch the reporting center for hate crimes against Asian American and Pacific Islanders in California.

Dominika Moravčíková is a postgraduate researcher in the Institute of Musicology at Charles University Prague. She is currently working on a project examining public and private sound regimes during the pandemic. She also conducts ethnographic research on music education of Roma children in Slovakia. Her research interests include nationalism, folklore revival movement, urban soundscapes, and constructions of peripherality in music.

Simultaneous Translation
The event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Wednesday 27 January to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.

Registration
We apologise that the entire registration page is not available in the medium of Welsh. Unfortunately, the platform we use does not offer this service.

Recording of Event
Please note this event will be recorded.