Mediated Intimacies: Teletherapy and the Changing Face of American Mental Healthcare by Rebecca J. Lester
“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?” “I can, but your head is cut off. I just see your neck. Can you hear me?” “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. &nb…
Tag: Features
Writing LifeNo. 14: An Interview with Hélène Mialet by Catelijne Coopmans
Image 1: Hélène’s home office. The pandemic has revealed the fragility of our lives and the vulnerability of our bodies. It has also revealed the importance of fleshy…
Not “just tools”: The framework of equivalence and cochlear implants in Jordan by Timothy Y. Loh
“Should all deaf children learn sign language?” This seemingly innocuous question was the theme of a roundtable article published in the influential journal Pediatrics in 2015, which compiled…
On borrowed time: Living with chronic terror in the United States’ insulin crisis by Erin V. Moore
As the United States began closing its borders in March 2020, Americans with diabetes, already under threat from the coronavirus, faced another pandemic hazard: pharmacies were regularly running…
Predicting Across Time and Space by Bettina Ng’weno
Every day for the month of March 2021, I watched the numbers of Covid-19 cases in Kenya climb and climb. Family and friends sent me messages that the…
Long Covid, chronic fatigue syndrome and women: the shadow of hysteria by Ilana Löwy
Is long Covid disseminated by newspapers? On April 14th, 2021, the British journalist and writer George Monbiot published an article entitled “Apparently just by talking about it, I’m…
Writing Life No. 11: An interview with Susan Frohlick by Amy Speier
Figure 1. Sue’s writing space in the beautiful Syilx (Okanagan) Nation territory. With Scooter, the family’s unruly cat. The development of our writing dyad has unfolded organically over…
Caring for home: The failures of vaccine nationalism, or, Why the pandemic will not be over soon by Luisa Madrigal
Para español aquí. It was one of those early spring evenings where the sun was warm and the air fresh. My friends and I were at the park,…
Visions of Black Futurity Amidst the Double Pandemic of COVID-19 and Police Brutality by Nadia Mbonde
When I ask Willow, an Afro-Puerto Rican young woman in her 20s, if quarantine has helped reduce the stigma of mental illness, she responds: I think it will…
Writing Life No. 9: An interview with Danya Fast by Robert Lorway
It is 11 am in Vancouver. Danya sits at a desk beside a large window that looks out onto tree tops and electrical wires. Rain pools in the…
Situating COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Tanzania by Thomas Nyalile
In early February 2021, Tanzanian Health Minister Dorothy Gwajima announced that the Tanzanian government would not partake in COVID-19 vaccination campaigns—“we are not yet satisfied that those vacc…
Thinking through the ‘Biosocial’: Rhythmic Reflections in Pandemic Times by Simon Williams
Much has been written of late on the ‘biosocial’ in the social sciences and humanities — see for example Ingold (2013), Meloni et al (2016), Lloyd and Muller…
Abou Farman’s On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience by Purbasha Mazumdar
On Not Dying: Secular Immortality in the Age of Technoscience Abou Farman University of Minnesota Press, 2020. 360 pages. Max More, a trained philosopher and the present Ambassador and…
Lightning strikes, or how an object of global health is made by Megan Vaughan
When we were children my mother always told us there was nothing to fear from thunderstorms. But it was hard not to notice that she did so whilst…
“Escaping from Quarantine” from Quarantined: My Ordeal in Uganda’s Covid-19 Isolation Centers by Jimmy Spire Ssentongo
Few published works of creative non-fiction exist on COVID-19 in Africa. With the publication of QUARANTINED, Ugandan intellectual and philosopher, Jimmy Spire Ssentongo has painted a behind-the-scen…
Craving to be heard but not seen – Chatbots, care and the encoded global psyche by Claudia Lang
Mounica Tata, Doodleodrama. “How are you today?” Wysa starts the conversation. “Not well,” I reply. “Sounds like today didn’t go well. I’m here for you. Describe how you’re…
Giulia Dal Maso: The Landing of a Chinese Green Bond in Portugal
This post is part of a feature on “The Political Power of Energy Futures,” moderated and edited by Katja Müller (MLU Halle-Wittenberg), Charlotte Bruckermann (University of Bergen), and…
Running on Borrowed Life by Marie Kofod Svensson
On a cold January afternoon in 2018, 18-year-old Sara locates me in the crowd at the train station. Together we take the bus to her home in a…
Dragan Djunda: Transition to nowhere: Small hydro, little electricity, and large profits in Serbia
When you enter the House of culture in Dojkinci, a small village on Stara Mountain, you are instantly amazed by its floor. The freshly painted red, green, and…
Pauline Destrée: Solar for the Few: Stranded Renewables and Green Enclaves in Ghana
Africa’s Green Energy Revolution In the past ten years, calls for a “green revolution” on the African continent have cast optimistic and promising scenarios of “leapfrogging” to mass…
Felix Lussem: Alienating “facts” and uneven futures of energy transition
We are in the middle of the Rhineland’s lignite mining region, a semi-urban to rural area in the west of Germany. The landscape is considerably altered by past…
Katja Müller, Charlotte Bruckermann, Kirsten Endres: Introduction: The political power of energy futures
Debates about climate change have long entered political arenas through diplomacy, bureaucracy and regulations as part of worldwide environmental governance. Global efforts to foster greener energy i…
Solidarity, infrastructure and critical pedagogy during COVID-19: Lessons from Brazil by Dominique P. Béhague
Even before the pandemic hit Brazil’s favelas, residents began organizing to protect themselves — against both the novel coronavirus and the government’s active suppression of effective public …
When ‘a People’s War’ Turns Against Them: Reflections on Uganda’s ‘War of the Wananchi’ against COVID-19 by Adventino Banjwa
Introduction “This is a people’s war”, declared President Museveni after the country’s first COVID-19 case, adding, “I have come here to lead the war of the wananchi [against…