Explicating the Transnational Disaster STS COVID-19 Project

• In Event: Corona Truth Wars: Testing and Contesting Knowledge in a Hyper-Mobile Pandemic - II

Abstract

The Transnational Disaster STS COVID-19 Project is a collaborative project to track and analyze COVID-19 as it unfolds around the world. A signature aspect of the project is its conceptualization of the pandemic as a transnational disaster, leveraging insight from critical studies of disaster, transnationalism and STS. The project leverages digital research infrastructure in ways new to the social sciences, connecting researchers-at-a-distance in collaborative analysis and interpretation. The project also has a strong pedagogical component, drawing in and connecting student researchers in different places. We’ll present the project architecture (based on small, interlinked research groups) and in-process work to produce a suite of place-focused COVID-19 case studies designed to counteract deeply entrenched methodological nationalism by thinking through the lens of transnational STS. The case studies foreground ways data infrastructure and capacity in different places is shaping how COVID-19 is understood, programmatically addressed, and challenges liberal constructs of the social contract.

Authors

• Kim Fortun, University of California Irvine

• Tim Schuetz, UC Irvine

• Maka Suarez, University of Oslo / Kaleidos - Center for Interdisciplinary Ethnography

• Duygu Kasdogan, İzmir Katip Çelebi University