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Catastrophic events like COVID-19 cause substantial material losses and significant harm to the public. However, such events may also accelerate socioeconomic developments such as increased digitalization of economic and societal activities, including e-government services. These services become especially critical in crisis situations , providing a vehicle for administrative responses and ensuring social and economic functioning. This paper reports on a pilot study on the impact of COVID-19 on the demand for and the provision of e-government services in a municipality in Poland. Interviews with city administrators and technical staff involved in providing e-government services during COVID-19 are the primary data sources. Issues identified relate to changes in work regulations, adjustments to operations, shifts in volume and types of services, and changes in employee attitudes and behaviors. Employing focusing event theory in interpreting the results, this paper contributes to the literature on information and communication technologies, especially e-government in local administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data from qualitative interviews and participant observation with those involved in artistic production in New Orleans, this paper considers the effect of crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic on cities and artists. It investigates the supports available to artists before and during the pandemic and the relationship between cultural workers and tourism in New Orleans. This relationship creates a paradox: New Orleans is unique because it is the site of enduring local cultural traditions and emerging creative production, and yet the city must sell its culture to tourists to remain economically solvent. Left to fend for themselves by larger institutions, arts communities and nonprofit organizations came together to mutually support each other. The paper concludes that what we can learn from this case is how people 'make do' and survive during an extended period of crisis – especially when the lessons of survival have been taught and tested through preceding crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, youth researchers have reported increased inequalities between young people, but the social processes that drive these changes are not well understood. In this paper, we draw on rich longitudinal interview data following the same participants from a year before and into the midst of national lockdown during the pandemic in Norway to explore the unfolding of classed and gendered responses that were triggered in young people across the class spectrum. We find that advantaged, ambitious youths engaged in self-resourcing practices with support from their family that could make them even better positioned after the crisis. Youths that were socially vulnerable before the pandemic dealt with the situation alone and in highly gendered ways that seemed to amplify their insecure position in the peer group and community. Thriving youths from working-class communities engaged in lockdown practices that connected them deeper to the family and resourced them for gender traditional, local lives. Illuminating how a crisis prompts practices that increased emerging differences along classed and gendered lines, the paper shows that to grasp inequalities in the making, researchers must consider the importance and changing nature of resources – including relational resources in the family – over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by Said's concept of exile, Camus' 1947 novel The Plague, and testimonies from our students, this paper explores the striking similarities between experiences of exile and the COVID-19 pandemic. Both exile and the pandemic are seen as intrusive forces causing rupture and discontinuity in one's life at the physical, psychological and socio-cultural levels. This paper demonstrates that for many Palestinians – including us and our students – the pandemic manifests what Freud termed 'repetition compulsion'. That is, many of our students interpret the detrimental and precarious impact of the pandemic as a complex form of exile, a nuanced understanding that blends a historical, communal memory of displacement with a present, universal crisis. This paper further explains that the themes of exile and displacement in Camus' The Plague provide us and our students with a focal point to examine the striking, albeit anachronistic, similarities between the pandemic caused by Israeli occupation and the COVID-19 virus. This uncanny relationship between the pandemic and exile is further substantiated by the fact that the pandemic has provided cover, or at least distraction, for the escalation of oppressive political actions, thus deepening the entrenchment of a physical and psychological 'exile' for Palestinians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global tourism industry necessitated several responses from policymakers in order to support the industry's recovery and post-pandemic growth. Southern Africa hosts tourism-sensitive and connected economies, with many tourists who arrive in one country, often visiting neighbouring countries. Using the United Nations World Tourism Organisation's policy framework for COVID-19 mitigation, recovery, and stability for the tourism industry, this paper critically examined the Southern Africa's level of support for mitigating the impact of the pandemic and their recovery strategies for the tourism industry. Data were collected from publicly available policy and strategic documents. Findings reveal non-compliance to referenced benchmarks, lack of regional policy direction from SADC, and divergent levels of support among the member countries. The paper recommends, among others, a revision of the SADC's regional tourism programme, collaborative tourism governance through increased regional integration, and improved destination attractiveness of the Southern African region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the experiences of US child welfare professionals during the COVID pandemic. Using an online survey, we report on a convenience sample of 444 child welfare workers. The majority reported receiving adequate guidance on staying safe; 86.3% were given access to face masks. Workers reported 75.8% of clients used masks; 10.7% reported contracting COVID through work. About 80% worried that child clients were more at-risk. Workers who felt the most supported and least at-risk were those with stay-at-home orders. Results are discussed in terms of supporting child welfare professionals during periods of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This small-scale qualitative research project is located within post-compulsory education in England and explores some of the strategies and responses employed by three initial teacher educators to carry out their professional role while responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The central argument is that teacher identity was significant as a pedagogical tool to respond to the pandemic. Therefore, more consideration should be given to the interconnectedness of who I am, what I do and why I do it, when pedagogical responses are needed to address emergent issues. The first part of the paper paints a picture of the available literature related to learning during covid-19, followed by an articulation of the research design. The second part discusses the relationship between identity and pedagogy, which is the central theme constructed from the data gathered from the research participants. It closes with a reflection about how educators as a collective have shown resilience and creative ways to deal with challenges, thus adding new layers of their identity, and this can be pedagogically powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normal lives of schools were significantly affected by the recent global pandemic. Some countries closed all schools nationally, others such as the USA closed at a local level according to state law. Much of the focus of research in this area is on the effect on children and learning loss, but this paper uses secondary analysis of data from a project on primary/secondary school transition in England to examine the experience of teaching in a pandemic, with a particular focus on pedagogy and professionalism. It presents our findings of a significant impact on teachers' professional lives in England; from the pedagogic difficulties of teaching online, dealing with the anxieties and fears of themselves and others, providing support in ways hitherto beyond their experience, increased and different workloads. Some embraced the positive challenge, but many found their mental health suffered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major challenge for journalism. In the case of Germany, critics very early on voiced concerns over the quality of mainstream media coverage. Mainstream media were attacked for the intensity of their coverage, for reporting too much and unnecessarily frightening audiences, for not presenting a diversity of viewpoints on the pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate it, and for being one-sided and too close to the government. Against this background, this paper examines the intensity and viewpoint diversity of the coverage of 13 mainstream and two alternative media in Germany in 2020 and 2021. Based on a comprehensive manual content analysis of almost 9000 news stories, we conclude that the mainstream media did not cover the pandemic in a fundamentally exaggerated or one-sided way. However, they did not always report intensively when the pandemic was particularly severe, and they tended to warn against the pandemic rather than criticize the measures taken. In contrast, alternative media coverage tended to be more one-sided and generally biased against government measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of papers we have put together for this special themed section originally emerged from a desire to explore how the rapid and wholescale transformation of everyday spaces brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic might change, challenge and shift experiences and understandings of the gendered body. Since 2020, we have witnessed and experienced the dramatic alteration of everyday mobilities and a concurrent reconfiguration of spatial and embodied relations. The pandemic, and responses to it, has transformed the locations in which subjects routinely situate themselves, and the quotidian bodily practices they participate in, with immediate and lasting impact. Such a moment called for a revisiting of established theoretical and methodological paradigms in feminist geography - many of which developed from within the pages of this journal - which understand the relationship between space and the gendered body to be a mutually constitutive one. If the gendered body is understood as a processual assemblage shaped by the spaces within which it is formed, what do such radical spatial reconfigurations of embodied relations mean for gendered subjects? These papers, then, represent an opportunity to revisit and reflect upon core debates about gender, embodiment, and space in feminist geography, understanding the pandemic via a gendered lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst NHS Health Service management is usually characterized by hierarchized bureaucracy and profit-driven competitiveness, the COVID-19 pandemic drastically disrupted these ways of working and allowed London-based non-clinical management to experience their roles otherwise. This paper is based on 35 interviews with senior non-clinical management at a London-based NHS Trust during 'Alpha phase' of Britain's pandemic response (May-August 2020), an oft-overlooked group in the literature. I will draw upon Graeber's theory of "total bureaucratization" to argue that though the increasing neo-liberalization of the health-services has hitherto contributed toward a corporate mentality, the pandemic gave managers a chance to experience more collaboration and freedom than usual, which ultimately led to more effective realization of decision-making and change. The pandemic has shown NHS managers that there are alternatives to neoliberal logics of competition and hierarchy, and that those alternatives actually result in happier and effectively, more capable staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon higher education institutions has been well documented, less is known about how academics themselves responded to these rapid changes. This paper analyses the experiences of teacher education academics from Australia and New Zealand (n = 13) who were interviewed during lengthy pandemic lockdowns. Whilst rarely using the language of resistance, participants revealed multiple ways they navigated these seemingly totalising forces of neoliberalism through working to maintain quality education, collegiality, criticality and care. Using theory to help inform our understandings of resistance, our study identified three forms of resistance that were underpinned by feminist, post-structural and critical pedagogy theories. In the face of likely ongoing uncertainty into the future, paying attention to how academics navigated the pandemic provides valuable insights into forms of emergent resistance in moments of extreme precarity in higher education, and the importance of these for continuity and hope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores tensions and ambiguities for UK HE teachers during COVID-19. It analyses changed behaviours and routines for existing hybrid workers experienced in online pedagogy through three core axes of precarity and security; time and perceptions of time; and communication. Twelve participants supplied photographs and written narratives depicting their teaching during the pandemic. To understand working lives at this liminal time, we undertook three-level photographic and content analysis, examining the interplay between homeworking challenges and extremities with an accompanying range of emotional responses. Findings include changed routines, new independence, and tensions around resulting autonomy in a liminal lockdown phase when everyday life was anything but. Recommendations for HE management are to ensure that effective communication and collaboration are privileged between management and academic staff. Moving forward, the value of academic judgement and voice should be acknowledged as much as teaching capacity in strategic planning and tuition delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Covid-19 pandemic led to an important reconfiguration of economic governance in the European Union towards deeper economic integration. This fits uneasily with predictions of an inevitable political 'lock-in' stemming from a responsibility–responsiveness dilemma, or an inexorably constraining politicisation. Investigating the evolution in discourses on and policies of economic governance in the EU, the papers in this collection approach the relationship between prevailing notions of responsible and responsive government as socially constructed and critically contingent upon politicisation processes. The special issue explores the reconfiguration of economic governance in the EU through multi-level analysis of politicisation, ranging from citizens' attitudes to conflicts over central banking mandates, using a variety of methodological toolkits. As the collection shows, the shift towards investment, fiscal sharing, and green transition in the new recovery programme followed the emergence of a form of 'responsive responsibility' dating back to the aftermath of the euro crisis and which has led to the incorporation of responsiveness imperatives in prevailing notions of 'responsible government'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islands are significantly on the agenda in Scotland. Media accounts – news, features, and other creative narratives – textually frame the representational terrains of island policy, agency and community. Such mediatization informs and responds to certain ideas and discourses of our island geographies. It typically includes what could be considered good islandness: that is, islands as good lifestyle havens, sites of social resilience and adaptive social renewal. During the COVID-19 pandemic, certain spaces and geographies were notably re-evaluated. Sites of 'isolation', 'remoteness' and places considered 'far from' occupied a heightened position of desirability and potential refuge. A purposive sample of stories and features is presented here to capture case exemplars of how Scotland's island space and place geographies were variously textually framed by media news across the initial lockdown and subsequent significant travel restriction phases (March 2020 to October 2020). The discussion explores how a short-view media framing of Scotland's island spaces specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic spoke to aspects of islandness as refuge and as resilience. The paper offers a longer-view perspective whereby the complexities and complicities of media framing of Scottish rural and island spaces as resilient is considered more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate whether fertility and newborn health changed during the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico. We use national administrative data and an event-study design to examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on fertility and newborn health characteristics. Our findings suggest that Mexico's fertility declined temporarily as measured by conceptions that likely occurred during the stay-at-home order. Initially, the general fertility rate fell by 11–12 per cent but quickly rebounded and returned close to its original levels by the end of 2021. Newborn health also deteriorated during the pandemic. Instances of low birthweight and prematurity substantially increased, with both remaining elevated over the entire pandemic period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed one of the most challenging situations for the academicians as well as the students all around the world. Students being the biggest stake holders of the education process, their challenges during this pandemic become even more pivotal. These challenges vary in intensity and type depending on multiple items. In this paper, we analyse and document the challenges particular to the courses of mathematics and statistics in higher education. A survey was carried out for students, who have taken mathematics/statistics courses at universities mainly in UAE, to analyse various items affecting the learning process during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of the survey showed that a significant portion of students are satisfied with distance education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on vaccines confirms the crucial role media play in framing discourses and mobilizing public support for successful immunization campaigns. What journalists cover on vaccination issues and their diligence in producing stories can influence attitudes to and uptake of vaccines. This paper contributes to emerging discussions on the role of the media in pandemics and in vaccination programs by interrogating the information seeking and verification practices of journalists reporting on COVID-19 vaccines in Ghana. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among journalists from June to July 2021 through self-administered questionnaires by means of Google forms. The opinions of 300 respondents, randomly drawn from members of the Ghana Journalists' Association, were solicited and a response rate of 73% obtained. Majority of journalists surveyed relied on official health sources for their information on COVID-19 vaccines (61.5%) and were confident the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks (70%). While journalists relied on a variety of expert sources, social media platforms served as important sources of information also, with respondents stating a preference for Facebook (48.3%), and WhatsApp (44%). Journalists stated they were guided by sound practices such as source credibility and relevance, but betrayed weaknesses in their verification practices with a third of them admitting to sharing unsolicited information from social media. Journalists in Ghana generally display a positive attitude towards COVID-19 vaccines and regularly search for information from official sources to inform their work, thus making them vital allies in overcoming vaccine hesitancy. Laxity in verification practices, however, makes them inadvertent agents of misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way time is allocated towards market and non-market activities. This paper looks at the effect of the pandemic on a key category of non-market activity – leisure. We use micro-data from the American Time Use Survey to see how the pandemic affected leisure in the United States. A seemingly unrelated regression system is deployed to examine how the pandemic affects various leisure activities such as television viewing, socialising, reading/writing, active sports, games, and computer use. Apart from socialising, which was actively discouraged during the pandemic, all major leisure activities saw an increase, which resulted in overall leisure going up in the Covid year 2020 by 5%, compared to 2019. However, the impact is statistically significantly different for different types of leisure activities. Active leisure is being consumed less while passive leisure is being consumed more – pointing towards an increased sedentarization of lifestyles. Since previous studies have shown passive leisure to be negatively associated with health, our result has important implications for the health and well-being of Americans, and if the trend continues, policymakers should actively incentivise the consumption of active forms of leisure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the spread of COVID-19 in early 2020, schools across the UK moved to virtual teaching arrangements for the majority of their learners. Some localized school closures occurred in England in February 2020, with a national lockdown following in March 2020. Although relaxed in June 2020, concerns about rising cases of the virus led to a second period of enforced school closure across the UK in January 2021. With no sign of the pandemic abating, we wanted to gain insights into teachers' experiences at this unique time. We used a solicited diary method with teachers over a 4-month period to reflect on workload and wellbeing issues related to their changing teaching practices. The diaries were supplemented by a series of teacher interviews. In this paper, we carry out a critical reflection of diary use. We observe how diaries provide a structure for eliciting ideas in an ordered way, and which then become a resource for a teacher's professional reflection. This process also appears to strengthen some of the social connections that were compromised during the social distancing periods of the pandemic, and which has benefits for teachers' wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges to higher education. This paper explores the challenges Indonesian female academics encountered during the pandemic in which the boundaries between home and work were further blurred. Accordingly, the gender gap was further widened as unpaid and unacknowledged academic and domestic work disproportionately affected women. This paper draws on data gathered from survey, diary studies and in-depth interviews with female academics in the social sciences and humanities. It examines how Indonesian female academics juggled domestic and professional work at home, caring duties both at home and work, and shouldering administrative workloads. In addition, findings reveal that female academics found new meanings in their academic work and the importance of caring and collective solidarity, especially in a crisis such as the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only claimed innumerable lives but the concomitant inflation has also frustrated many small and large enterprises, not to mention the loss of jobs that employees have suffered and sometimes succumbed to through self-harm and suicides. In this context, this paper probes how a politics of representation has deeply informed the dissemination and consumption of 'COVID news,' rendering a legitimate visibility largely to the loss and contributions of subjects that have access to socio-economic and political resources. Milan Kundera uses the term 'symbolic voltage' to refer to the role that the media plays in 'constructing' our everyday realities. In The Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio states that modern media technology has created a 'crisis of representation' or an optical illusion, where the distinctions between near and far, object and image, have imploded. In a bid to keep apace with a metanarrative of pandemic-engendered loss, the collective consciousness of different societies has not adequately focused on the marginalised subjects – the wage worker, the woman, the juvenile and the scholar from suburban/rural area. The paper argues that the 'Covid-19-as-a-past' is likely to be represented through the semantics of traditional history, which is a narrative of and by the powerful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The epidemic of COVID-19 has been the most mathematically informative pandemic. The unprecedented information gives rise to some unprecedented models, problems, and discussions. One of these new matters is modeling the epicenters of a pandemic. The present paper is the first attempt to model the waiting time to introduce a new epicenter during a pandemic. This modeling is conducted in terms of time-to-event, the number of epicenters, and the normalized time. We model the waiting time data by an exponential distribution, therefore, the number of epicenters can be represented through a Poisson process. Then, the parameters are estimated by the method of moments and maximum likelihood method. All the simulations are the result of 10,000 runs conducted on MATLAB R2015b. It is expected to encounter 12 and 14 (with probability 95%, 3-24 and 7-23) epicenters from 15th May to 13th June and from June 14 to July 12, 2020, respectively. We forecast that the cumulative number of confirmed cases for coming epicenters is over 10,000 when they join the existing epicenters. The paper suggests that the time to epicenter is a suitable criterion to compare the spreading speed of an epidemic in different periods or even different epidemics. The study aims to model the time to the next epicenters during the pandemic COVID-19. The study introduces the time to epicenter as a criterion to study of spreading speed of an epidemic in different periods or compare different epidemics. The study deals with the number of cumulative confirmed cases at the time that a region become epicenter. The study proposes the Poisson process as the model to describe the number of epicenters. The study suggests that exponential distribution can model the time to event for the epicenters of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses U.S. pandemic-related propaganda, as a mode of administering society, selves, and the COVID-19 virus relevant to other national contexts. The paper examines what I call pandemic revanchism, which, in order to stoke U.S. culture wars, propag(and)ates the COVID-19 epidemic by sensationalizing the trivial and normalizing the extraordinary or absurd. Banal forms of administrative grotesquerie mobilize a community of alt-health (non)sense and tie freedom to a viral and literally infectious resentment and retaliatory collateral mortality. The paper first develops the framework of FOOB ('folklore of operational banality') to scrutinize how ordinary health/medical administration and reactionary power relations alike level sense and non-sense. It then offers a performative analysis that shows human geographies of routinized anti-establishment refusal and conspiratorial organizing related to the pandemic. The FOOB approach refuses to simply admonish pandemic revanchism and, instead, tracks how this form of administration consolidates social terrains and quotidian online activity. The analysis seeks to level criticism in a way that undermines social division. It does so by remaining open to reasonable doubts about biomedicalization that are swept up in alt-health and pandemic-related propaganda, and by foregrounding how policy, affect, and storylines routinize extremisms within the American public terrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the current status of Indian smart cities and examines their preparedness and response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The study focuses on implemented & ongoing projects under the Smart City Mission of the Government of India, which have contributed significantly to controlling the pandemic along with other channels. The study finds that modern cities in both developed and developing countries were not well-prepared to deal with the emergency situations and struggled in providing a satisfactory response during the pandemic. The analysis of primary and secondary data has shown that digital surveillance and movement control through integrated control command centers (ICCC) were the most useful projects in monitoring the COVID-19 cases. However, the lack of technology integration in smart cities hinders the effective usage of implemented projects. Thus, the study recommends integrated network-based applications that include healthcare, essential services, mobility, and movement across smart cities in India. The proposed framework is expected to provide the much-needed alignment at the policy, objective, and implementation levels of smart city framework designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although COVID-19 has commonly been narrated as an impediment to the arts, I argue that it also offered exciting new opportunities to engage audiences with exhibitions focus on public health crises. In this article, I reflect on my experience of curating Picturing the Invisible with students at Technical University Munich (TU Munich) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Organized in memory of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, the exhibition was shown at the Royal Geographical Society, London (October till December 2021) during the so-called "second wave" and at TU Munich (June 2022) amid the rise of the Omicron Variant. Departing from the common tendency to narrate events as having been successfully organized despite the pandemic, this paper presents the virus as co-creating—perhaps even co-curating—the exhibition. To do so, I provide a brief overview of Picturing the Invisible, before going on to analyze the role that the virus played in calling me to organize this project (as both a researcher and as a lecturer), how it has made it logistically possible, and how it presented new opportunities to engage foreign audiences with the experience of Japan's triple disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay proposes a return to C. G. Jung's personality theories and argues in favor of their relevancies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented changes it produced to forms of socialization. Through a narratological analysis of survey data gathered by the author, this paper maintains that the adaptability, malleability, and complexity of Jung's psychic paradigms is what makes his theories of the personality current in the 2020s. The survey, distributed globally in the summer of 2021, consisted of open essay-style questions that encouraged participants' narrative orientation. Results are mixed and do not always follow type expectations (not all introverted participants thrived, nor did all extraverts struggle). Mixed results point to human variability, which Jung acknowledges even within types, and to the existence of multiple stories about the lived experience of COVID-19 lockdowns. Ultimately, I propose a post-Jungian, post-pandemic approach to the personality, which takes contextual factors into account, and I advocate a humanistic approach to Jung, which will result in a better understanding of human psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is increasingly urgent to consider how work conditions have shifted with neoliberal transformations and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. The precarious nature of work faced by millennials is widely acknowledged in the academic literature, but few scholars consider how spirituality is intimately connected to the multiple labour market challenges in the Global South. This paper uses sequential mixed methods to depict the social realities of millennials living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Importantly, precarity has become more entrenched into the nature of work during the pandemic, through the passage of the 2020 Job Creation Law. Precarious millennials in this Muslim-majority city use spiritual lexicons as coping strategies, as these help urban millennials to accept (ikhlas) the gradual disappearance of financially rewarding jobs and dwindling prospects for upward mobility in the formal economy. While spiritual narratives might seem religiously specific, they are useful for both Muslim and non-Muslim millennials to respond to broader and systemic job insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourse in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic explored its likely effects on the tourism sector including the nature of recovery. Viewed through the lens of Evolutionary Economic Geography, this paper examines the preferences of four stakeholder groups for future tourism development in Northern Devon. Specifically, it reports on their views from 2021 and 2022 of three potential scenarios which were elaborated before the pandemic, and it explores whether COVID-19 was a trigger event for a change in trajectory. There was consistent support for the most sustainable trajectory, which represented the continuation of the existing arc of development, not a fundamental change in direction triggered by COVID-19. Not only does this finding contribute a retrospective critique of early opinions on possible COVID-induced change, it suggests an alternative view of the role of trigger events in destination evolution. The pandemic offered space for reflection on tourism development, as a form of 'mindful continuation' of transformation, not a 'mindful deviation' identified in some previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have placed a renewed strain on the economic governance of the European Union (EU). The European Central Bank (ECB) was a key player in the EU's response to the crisis induced by the pandemic. This paper adopts a theoretical approach focused on policy learning to explain how and why the ECB responded to the crisis in 2020–2021. By drawing on speeches, newspaper articles and interviews with policy-makers, the paper finds that the ECB was able to rely on earlier crisis experiences in the euro area in forming its response to the pandemic crisis. Although the sovereign debt crisis and the pandemic crisis had both similarities and differences from one another, the ECB was able to engage in inter-crisis and intra-crisis learning. Its learning concerned objectives, instruments as well as an awareness that timely and forceful response was crucial, so that the member states and other EU institutions had time to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to social and cultural geographies of the COVID-19 pandemic through an exploration of the role of UK street art in documenting the remarkable shifts in the practice of wearing facemasks, the tensions and emotions involved, and the transformations in the meaning of facemasks during the pandemic. Street art has become an important outlet for political critique and social engagement, capturing the public mood in response to policies and recommendations attempting to stem viral transmission, including the requirement to wear facemasks in some public places. Drawing primarily on image analysis of street artworks produced during 2020 and sourced using online search tools, and qualitative interviews with UK street artists in 2020 and 2021, the paper first explores the changing geographies and politics of street art during the pandemic. It then examines the ways in which street art portrays mask-wearing simultaneously as reassuring, protective and fear-inducing, and reflects the meaning of masks in relation to protecting public health, managing anxieties concerning health risks, boosting morale, and symbolising solidarity and public spiritedness. The paper argues that pandemic street art contributes to public dialogue by articulating emotion and deeply held concerns, and communicating the intimate politics, semiotic meanings and social properties of objects associated with disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed complex connections between housing and health vulnerabilities. By investigating the share housing market in Sydney, Australia during the COVID-19 period, this paper examines these connections, highlighting health risks associated with shared facilities, overcrowding, and rental insecurity. Using data from Flatmates.com.au, Australia's dominant share housing platform, the paper analyses advertisements offering or seeking share housing in April and August 2020. The analysis highlights health risks, vulnerabilities and risk management strategies employed by those looking for share accommodation or new household members during the pandemic period as well as wider implications for housing and health policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the effects that mobility restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic have had on different types of co-presence, which the existing literature considers to be central for science and innovation. Drawing on a regional analysis of COVID-19 restrictions in Germany, it links specific mobility restrictions to concrete impacts on co-presence, differentiating between co-presence in organizations, dynamic temporary co-presence, and the local 'buzz'. It highlights that co-presence at workplaces and conferences was resilient to restrictions but that the detrimental effects on the 'local buzz' may have been substantial and long-lasting. In conclusion, it cautions against the severe effects of placing restrictions on the education system. Subsequently, the discussion links the reported disruptions of co-presence to the potential effects of the pandemic on preconditions for innovative processes and economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the enactment of government policy during the Covid pandemic in primary schools in England. Based on interviews with school leaders and teachers across the period 2020–21 (n = 66), drawn from two major studies of primary schools' priorities during the crisis, we argue that school leaders' responses can be understood as a distinct form of policy enactment particular to an unprecedented crisis. Policy arrived in schools differently, and was enacted differently. Our findings suggest that enacting policy during the Covid crisis was a process dominated by the need to act at speed, informed by the prioritisation of children's basic needs and based on a knowledge of the local circumstances. Thus dimensions of context which affect policy enactment were altered during the crisis, with the material circumstances of the school and the values of the headteacher becoming highly significant. The approach we term crisis policy enactment is response to policy which is focused first on coping but is also agentic, demonstrating a commitment to children's welfare and a belief in the power of schools to make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of the pandemic (from 2020 to 2021) on levels of trust and legitimacy of the Chilean police (Carabineros) by the population in the metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile. Based on a pseudo-panel method and a cohort fixed-effects regression model that controlled for unobserved time invariant heterogeneity, we found a significant increase in police legitimacy during the pandemic (on average, 63%, among the adult residents of the region, based on the police legitimacy index comprising six perceptual variables). Evidence suggests that the perceived performance of the Carabineros during the pandemic served to recover the trust of citizens, at least temporarily, even when this intervention entailed the enforcement of anti-popular measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a total of 676 million cases of infection and 6.9 million deaths. During a pandemic, healthcare workers are exposed to psychological stressors such as high risk of infection, inadequate protection, and isolation, which could have implications for their wellbeing. The purpose of this qualitative literature review carried out systematically was to examine the views of physiotherapists who worked with COVID-19 patients during the COVID-19 pandemic to identify how physiotherapy services might be better prepared for future pandemics. A systematic search was carried out across four databases (CINAHL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, SPORTDISCUS) to identify relevant studies. Studies were assessed for quality and data extracted and analysed using thematic synthesis. A total of 631 studies were identified through the search strategy and screened against the inclusion/exclusion criteria. Six papers met the inclusion criteria. Four themes were identified from the perspective of the physiotherapy participants: lack of resources; emotional impact; coping strategies and integration; and value within the multidisciplinary team. Overall qualitative evidence around the views of physiotherapists who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic is limited. An insight into the views of participants may help healthcare organisations support physiotherapy services to be better prepared in the event of a future pandemic, specifically addressing the need to strengthen supply chains, advocating for physiotherapy as a profession in low-income counties and psychological resilience. Future research should focus on identifying the most effective support options and strategies to build psychological resilience before a crisis occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how public libraries in the United Kingdom were impacted by the lockdowns imposed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Freedom of Information requests were made to all UK public library services. The data received indicated that almost 65% of UK library services saw a reduction in physical loans of between 70% and 90% of pre-pandemic borrowing levels. The cumulative data also revealed that almost 120 million books that were issued in pre-pandemic years were not issued in the 2020/21 lockdown period. Meanwhile, 47% of library services saw their e-loan provision rise between 100% and 200% on pre-pandemic levels, although these numbers rose from a low base and were comparatively small when measured against physical loan losses. The data also highlighted that active membership of the public library services (members who had borrowed an item in the previous year) dropped to 40% of pre-pandemic levels across the UK. The evidence highlights that while e-loan provision rose significantly while physical library services were largely unavailable, this rise was from a very low base, and this rise in digital usage did not come close to mitigating the drop in physical borrowing that occurred across the UK. The findings of the paper suggest that even when the public had no choice but to move to digital, they did so in limited numbers when compared to usage of physical library buildings and collections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the making of teachers as educational subjects within a specific socio-historical context. It attempts to create a critical ontology of teacher identity, as highlighted by pedagogical discourses during the initial stages of the Coronavirus Pandemic in Hawaiʻi and the subsequent school shut down during the 2020 Spring semester. Through autoethnographic practitioner inquiry, I analyse the relationship between education and the state, the historical and contemporary discourses at play, and the tensions of teacher agency in (re)shaping teacher identities. The paper analyses educational continuities and discontinuities in Pandemic discourses, specific to my context but resonant with national trends within the United States. These include the affective governance of responsibilisation, the amplification of inequalities, the shifting perception of the teaching profession, the proliferation of divergent pedagogical discourses and technologies, and increased teacher agency in (re)making their own identities, roles, and responsibilities within the ambiguity of the socio-historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Almost 50 years ago, Edward Said wrote on 'the other' in relation to race and gender in his path-breaking book Orientalism (1978). While much has evolved around notions of gendered and racialised otherness since then, Said's conceptualisation still resonates today. Our paper reports on a 2020/2021 survey of Women of Colour in the Australian workplace. The survey was conducted during the pandemic by Women of Colour Australia, a not-for-profit group, working with the lead author. We focus on the qualitative answers from participants, many of which detail sometimes painful and extremely personal workplace experiences. More than 500 Women of Colour, including seven per cent who were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, completed the survey. Sixty per cent said they had experienced discrimination in the workplace, despite 59 per cent of participants saying their workplace had a Diversity and Inclusion policy. Participants had to 'perform' their identities whilst being subjected to intersectional issues of racism and sexism, some of which the pandemic exacerbated. Our paper describes the harmful ramifications of gendered othering of Women of Colour for Australian organisations and society in the years of the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every minute of every day, 24 Americans experience intimate partner violence (IPV). During a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, daily life may be disrupted and there can be increased risk for harm associated with IPV. The novelty of the pandemic in modern times coupled with the potential for increased risk at the intersection of the pandemic and IPV (e.g., staying home with a partner, increased stress, uncertain access to community resources) demanded rapid innovation and implementation. Recognizing that IPV is a significant health issue, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rapidly mobilized a multifaceted nationwide response to ensure that veterans, their partners, and VA staff would have resources and support available, and empower those working directly with patients to ensure safety is addressed. IPV, like national and global crises, necessitates an interprofessional and multisystemic response, and as such, this paper details an approach to de-silo institutions and purposefully initiate the necessary partnerships to respond to complex needs that arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A group of researchers came together during the COVID-19 pandemic to conduct an observational study on trail use behaviour. The purpose of this paper is not to report on the trail data collected, but to reflect on the research process during an unprecedented time. Specifically, the objectives of the paper are to identify challenges and tensions of collecting data during a pandemic, and reflect on the unanticipated rewards that arose while conducting such research. The paper relies on vignettes/reflections from seven researchers who shared stories that exemplified their data collection experiences during the first three months of the project. The researchers' reflections provide an insider view into the challenges they faced. Using thematic analysis, themes about logistical difficulties, safety concerns, sense of time, and making connections were identified. The challenges and the importance of the researchers' relationships with one another were evident in the reflections. In sharing their reflections, the hope is that their experiences may inform future fieldwork during difficult periods. This study examined some of the challenges of collecting data during a pandemic and the tensions that occurred, but there are lessons here for other stressful and unique research situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women's lives have been affected exponentially by the COVID_19 pandemic. In this paper, we explore some of the ways in which women's everyday experiences of paid and unpaid labour have exacerbated pre-existing gender inequalities. We examine the impact that the pandemic has had on women's experiences within the domestic sphere, as hyper-normative and historical representations of women as the 'natural' primary carers for children and the home have resurfaced. For many, this has led to an almost unbearable pressure to provide full-time domestic care while simultaneously holding down paid work. Drawing on theoretical feminist debate, which has emphasised the importance of intersectional approaches to gender, the paper shows how the fusion of domestic worlds and public lives has brought domestic issues and challenges to the fore and has meant that women's participation in paid work has been disproportionately affected by the pandemic in a number of ways. Women have an increased likelihood of, first, furlough and redundancy; second, of working in 'high-risk' jobs; third, of experiencing poverty; and fourth, of bearing the brunt of domestic labour and childcare intensified during the pandemic. Written by both an academic and practicing full-time politician, it offers a unique perspective on this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the COVID-19 pandemic as a test that has disrupted the flow of a particular type of social and physical mobility. It takes pathways embarked upon by students from Asian countries to "prestigious" anglophone universities as its focal point of analysis, considering how the residential, consecratory experience of attending elite institutions has been disrupted when universities go virtual or as students are prevented from travelling to their university's country destination. Building theoretically on the sociology of conventions and testing, I analyse public institutional responses at the commencement of the outbreak from elite universities in the US and the UK, which have hosted large numbers of students from Asian countries in past decades. This paper focuses on how these universities responded to international students under conditions of uncertainty, examining how they justify their role, purpose and operations, while canvassing for continued support from this student segment. The findings highlight contesting orders of worth between states and institutions, as clashes between market, civic and domestic regimes exert significant pressures on organisational efforts to coordinate and cope during this critical moment, thereby raising questions about how prevailing logics of elite transnational education have been altered in the face of a pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The de-focalisation of reporting and the focalisation of post-truth ideology is antithetical to the tenets of democracy. It reverts to the traditional centralised propagation of one truth, one reality, and one perspective while contracting, negating, or antagonising the possibility of alternative and parallel narratives. The right wing has created a narrative of suspicion, which is based on the conviction that anything deviating from the traditional cultural patterns is a contamination of the ethos of one's own native values, a deviation from the nativity, and hence an influence that needs to be disposed of. The ongoing Covid pandemic has magnified the narrative of post-truth through the use of sensationalism as an effective modus operandi. The blinding of the truth is rampant as news outlets are being guarded by right-wing gatekeepers and sensationalism is used to reflect the surging emotions of a public already gripped by a precarious reality. This paper examines the three primary and seemingly independent threats to democracy during the pandemic in India: de-focalisation of reporting, coerced homogeneity based on religion and language, and sensationalism. It addresses the question of how adversity is turned into a breeding ground for demagoguery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing online services and assistance to library users has become the standard practice of many libraries worldwide. It has prompted many institutions to develop strategic actions to remain relevant in the absence of physical services. Although there are numerous initiatives among public libraries for teens, there is limited literature about the provision of online services and assistance for teens during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, this study seeks to highlight the services, efforts, and initiatives of Qatar National Library, specifically its Young Adult (YA) Section, in planning and implementing virtual services to address the information needs of teens during a pandemic. Additionally, this study will present information that might help library professionals design their own library plans and programs to serve young adults virtually. This paper takes a quantitative approach to share the library's experience organizing various online events and reference services for youth development amid limited access to physical services. This case study includes information about user feedback, highlighting the teens' experience with the library's virtual programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to ignite a conversation on the challenges of the ongoing 'novel' surrounding the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic in the Southern Africa region. The global COVID-19 pandemic started with the outbreak in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. It is understood that different countries, regions and territories will have different, context-specific challenges in fighting the pandemic. These will differ from country to country and therefore necessitates contextual research. By sharing African perspectives on swift action against this coronavirus, this paper is intended to appraise the nexus between the coronavirus and tourism in order to prepare tourism practitioners for the recovery strategies that will be needed to address the damages caused by the pandemic. This paper points to tourism researchers focusing on the Southern African region and possible key areas for further research as the coronavirus situation unfolds. It draws from published material and document analysis, including from academic research, media reports and social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, 'As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch', gathers wider philosophical considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, 'Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?', looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, 'If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you', focuses to Greta Thunberg's messages and their responses. The last section, 'Towards a new (educational) normal', explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles' parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic (philosophy of) education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created an unprecedented physical and mental health crisis on an international scale. Clients and therapists alike navigated the fears and uncertainty surrounding the virus, often in an environment of social isolation. The following paper presents a brief overview of the unique stressors and psychosocial factors impacting therapeutic work in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, including fears of the virus and social transmission, relational stressors due to isolation, grieving in isolation, fear of death, financial challenges, and the transition to telehealth. In addition, this paper aims to provide specific interventions and helpful approaches for psychotherapists navigating the novel challenges and demands to their clinical work through an AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) perceptive. This includes finding an entry point for accessing the pain: undoing aloneness; moving through the pain: dyadic affect regulation; and paying close attention to vitality within suffering: searching for transformance. Recommendations for the health and care of the clinician are also discussed, such as attuning to self-needs, anticipating and detecting dysregulation, staying with the good, meaning-making, identifying and responding to burnout, and the importance of receiving personal therapy and clinical supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about the demands of 'pandemic pedagogy' and the 'online pivot' which have seen educators across the globe move to online teaching. Multiple studies are emerging of these online pedagogies and hasty upskills. Less exploration exists on the educator's own curation of the online self and on the extra workload of teaching online. This paper draws on the work of Zygmunt Bauman and Rein Raud, their work on performativity and 'practices of selfhood', to examine educators' self-curation onscreen. I suggest that educators' work has expanded to include the cultivation of an online self and that teaching online is a feature of the encroachment on the personal space and personal lives of academics. Teaching online, as such, is being weaponized by the neoliberal agendas at play in the education field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a follow-up to the study 'A mindful shift: an opportunity for mindfulness-driven tourism in a post-pandemic world', which was published in Tourism Geographies. The original paper advocated that, during a major crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus could be put on (more) mindful tourists as a driver of mindful change for the global tourism industry. In this follow-up study, we discuss the mindfulness-based approaches as feasible, low-cost solutions to reduce negative psychological effects in many tourism settings as well as a strategy to ensure the tourism industry's pro-longed sustainability during and after the pandemic. We start with the underlying mechanism of mindfulness practices as a technique to cope with the pandemic and, from a managerial standpoint, discuss the different roles of mindfulness within the envisioned courses of tourism development in a post-COVID-19 future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]