The Digital Pandemic Interviews

Digital Pandemic

Interview series with academics, professionals, and people on the experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Created by Pujita Guha, Surojit Kayal, and Maile Aihua Young

Episodes

  1. 11/17/2020

    Carolina Arias

    Carolina Arias is an Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology. Her lab at UCSB focuses on virus-host interactions. We ask about being a virologist during a global pandemic and the process of making the virus visible to non-specialists. The complications of communicating scalar risk during a pandemic also features in our conversation.

    34 min

  2. 11/14/2020

    Kirsten Ostherr Part 2

    (Part 2 of 2) Kirsten Ostherr, Professor of English at Rice University, speaks with us about her research on medical imaging and public imaginations of disease. We think about what it means to “visualize a virus” in addition to discussing data privacy and risk in the landscape of digital healthcare. Maile uses “spreading like wildfire” as a poorly timed metaphor for the actual wildfires which would soon spread across the West Coast.

    28 min

  3. 11/14/2020

    Kirsten Ostherr Part 1

    (Part 1 of 2) Kirsten Ostherr, Professor of English at Rice University, speaks with us about her research on medical imaging and public imaginations of disease. We think about what it means to “visualize a virus” in addition to discussing data privacy and risk in the landscape of digital healthcare. Maile uses “spreading like wildfire” as a poorly timed metaphor for the actual wildfires which would soon spread across the West Coast.

    25 min

  4. 10/28/2020

    Kim Hoffman

    Kim Hoffman, Solution Services Sales Specialist at Microsoft, speaks with us about how technology companies are  working with state and local initiatives to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. We talk about data privacy and the development and implementation of contact tracing applications.

    36 min

  5. 10/26/2020

    Tina White

    Tina White, creator of CovidWatch and Ph.D student at Stanford University, tells us about the process of developing a contact tracing app sensitive to data privacy. Data collection, surveillance, and protecting contact tracing application users are the main topics of conversation.

    30 min

  6. 10/16/2020

    Priscilla Wald

    Priscilla Wald, Distinguished Professor of English at Duke University, researches the cultural conditions which help define the narratives of disease outbreaks. Living through a global pandemic, of course, offers new dimensions to both the historical events which Dr. Wald studies and shapes how we talk about pandemics in the years to come. We speak with her about the narrative of COVID-19, structural violence, and the influence of the digitalized present on the pandemic experience.

    36 min
  7. Anying Guo

    09/06/2020

    Anying Guo

    Anying Guo, the Fine Arts editorial aide at the Washington Post, talks with us about the challenges print media faces in the changing landscape of increasingly digitized production accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss changes in form, content, and readership of major news publications as they reflect the ongoing experience of pandemic.

    33 min
  • 7 Episodes

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Interview series with academics, professionals, and people on the experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. Created by Pujita Guha, Surojit Kayal, and Maile Aihua Young

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