Precedented events: historical perspectives on COVID-19
Global pandemics are nothing new. Social distancing and quarantining have been repeatedly deployed in the past to control mass disease outbreaks, historic plagues have been marked by both kindness and inequality, quack remedies have been peddled, and explanations sought.
This panel of historians from Jesus discuss the rich resources that history has to offer our understanding of and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From the ‘Antonine plague’ in the second century AD through the Black Death and the Great Influenza of 1918-19 to SARS and Swine Flu in the Twenty-first, there are plenty of precedents to help make sense of what is going on now.
The panellists are:
- Rachel Clamp (2014), Alumna of Jesus College, now studying for a PhD at the University of Durham
- Dr Rebecca Flemming, Jesus College Fellow and University Senior Lecturer in Classics (Ancient History)
- Professor Mary Laven (1989), Jesus College Fellow and Professor in Early Modern History
- Dr Hillary Taylor, Jesus College Fellow and Lecturer in Early Modern British Social and Economic History
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This academic debate is part of the Intellectual Forum Virtual series of events hosted in the Frankopan Hall and was held on Friday 1st May 2020.
