Blog
Remembering the Sun of Joy
The travellers among us are on short rein this year. Even the most profound distortion of space-time cannot bring the Andes mountains within my personal 5 km radius, and the… | Read on »
Australia under COVID-19
In Australia, a lot of things that were of consuming interest a few months ago have disappeared from view. We were almost on the verge of doing something about climate change… | Read on »
New York Returns
New York, 11 May 2020 New York is back. I don’t mean flattening the curve or reopening, baseball or Broadway. But New York as a city defined by a flintily… | Read on »
Reeling in the years: why 664 AD was a terrible year in Ireland
Analysis: the plague of 664 AD was one of the transformative events of early Irish history and its devastating effects lingered for several years The Irish annals for 664 AD… | Read on »
A Transatlantic Forager
In this pandemic we find ourselves asking questions about the future as we try to make sense of our place in the world and our connection to it. Many have… | Read on »
Lockdowns, literature, and balconies in Covid-19 Russia
From the bubonic plague (1351–53,1770–71) to the various cholera outbreaks that assailed the nineteenth-century imperial power, Russia, like the West, is no stranger to epidemics and quarantine procedures. Indeed, cholera… | Read on »
‘The strictest in Europe’: how Spain dealt with the lockdown
Opinion: in the midst of severe coronavirus restrictions, Spain has seen ‘unthinkable’ transformations and changes in living patterns What should have been a short research trip to Spanish… | Read on »
Art and Culture after Covid-19
An earlier version of this guest post appeared on wakeinalarm.blog The Experience of our generation: That Capitalism will die no natural death. — Walter Benjamin, 1935 Business as Usual?… | Read on »
India’s Ruthless Response to COVID 19
India’s lockdown has now been if force for more than a month. The announcement on March 24th was dramatic, bold and also ruthless. The international community broadly applauded the move… | Read on »
Put down The Plague, a novel by De Maistre is more hopeful
First published in the Irish Times on 21 April 2020 As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, many people have sought in literature a balm for current fears and anxieties. In Japan,… | Read on »