The Pandemic and Beyond: The Arts and Humanities Contribution to Covid Research and Recovery

Abstract

The Pandemic and Beyond (P&B) is an AHRC-funded cross-disciplinary coordination project based at the University of Exeter. Between February 2021 and February 2023, it was responsible for co-ordinating the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s COVID-19 research portfolio of 77 UK-based projects that responded to a call, first issued on 31 March 2020, ‘for ideas to address COVID-19’. The portfolio projects focused principally on the UK and have contributed tounderstanding the urgent problems created or exacerbated by pandemic mitigation measures in the UK while exploring practical solutions.

This end-of-project report provides a summary of the work carried out by the Pandemic and Beyond team between February 2021 and September 2022. Its aim is to support AHRC with evidence-based narratives and analyses of processes, methods, impacts, data, and case studies. It reports on impacts of the pandemic on the research culture, and it makes recommendations designed to inform approaches to future crisis responses and the coordination of research portfolios.

In addition to the named authors, the report was co-authored by Des Fitzgerald (Co-I) and Karen Gray (PDRA).