Introducing the Pandemic Diaries

As borders shut down, quarantines are enforced and the world comes to a standstill, what is there to gain from an anthropological engagement with the virus? The Pandemic Diaries essay collection seeks to explore this question through a series of rolling essay installments, each of which will aim to address some of the most pressing issues at the time. Edited by the in-house AES team of Gabriela Manley, Bryan M Dougan, and Carole McGranahan, our hope is to challenge us to critically reflect on our experience of the virus from a number of different perspectives, all of which have significantly disrupted our lives as anthropologists, as academics, and as members of society. Crucially we seek to ask, what are the themes we should be exploring, and questions we should be asking in these times of deep disruption