Project: Media and Epidemics: Technologies of Science Communication and Public Health in the 20th and 21st Centuries
| Acronym | MEDEP (Reference Number: CHANSE-284) |
| Duration | 01/11/2022 - 01/11/2025 |
| Project Topic | What is the relationship between technologies of communication and social and cultural change? This collaborative project between humanities researchers and art practitioners proposes to explore this question in the context of public health and illness. More specifically, it seeks to document, from historical and contemporary as well as trans-disciplinary and trans-regional perspectives, the role of media and technologies of communication in the mediatization and management of epidemic outbreaks in Poland, Romania, the UK and India since the mid-twentieth century. Our concern is to historicize contemporary digital transformations in the field of public health and advance academic and public conversations about the actual meaning of the ‘Digital Age,’ both as a heuristic device and lived reality. Focusing on four groups of social actors—governments, scientists and healthcare professionals, media institutions and practitioners, and persons with disabilities—we will probe the interconnected development of medicine, media and technology in order to address a question of significant contemporary relevance: How digital is the Digital Age? The project brings to the fore neglected media and technologies of public health, exploring their materiality, contexts of use as well as the form and content of the communications they mediated. It pays attention to the social inequalities, exclusions and ethical dilemmas that have framed technology use in public health as well as the intersections between political power, the mediatization of epidemics and the public communication of science. Through its strong public outreach component that involves collaborations with theatre performers and creative writers, it also aims to devise immersive educational tools that help to restore the memory of past pandemics to public consciousness and promote critical thinking about the intersections of public health, media and technology in the Digital Age. |
| Network | CHANSE |
| Call | Transformations: Social and Cultural Dynamics in the Digital Age |
Project partner
| Number | Name | Role | Country |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Heidelberg | Coordinator | Germany |
| 2 | University of Birmingham | Partner | United Kingdom |
| 3 | University of Bucharest | Partner | Romania |
| 4 | Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences | Partner | Poland |
| 5 | Fragile Society | Observer | Romania |
| 6 | University of Oxford Department of Continuing Education | Observer | United Kingdom |
| 7 | Academy for Theatre and Digitality (Theater Dortmund) & Drama Queen | Observer | Germany |
| 8 | Teatr 21 | Observer | Poland |