COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to cause disruption and devastation to individuals, communities and economies in Australia and around the world.

This page provides information on the activities of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and its Fellows to help inform, advise and guide the national and international response to the crisis.

Please contact the Academy’s National Office if you would like to speak with one of our experts or to discuss potential opportunities to work together.

Academy Fellows and many other social science researchers have been contributing significant time and expertise to the global response to COVID-19. The following covers just a few of these. If you would like your work included in this list please contact us at info-at-socialsciences.org.au

• Mark Finnane (Griffith University) has been published in Australian Historical Studies, Governing in a Pandemic: Law and Government in Australia, 1919 
• Michael Quinlan has written an editorial, COVID-19, Health and Vulnerable Societies for Global Health Journal (Annals of Work Exposure and Health) on COVID, insecure work and vulnerable societies.
• Kanishka Jayasuriya (Murdoch University) has written a paper on the political economy of the higher education crisis ‘COVID-19, markets and the crisis of the higher education regulatory state: the case of Australia.’
• David Rowe (UWS) has been published in the Journal of Sociology on the topic of Subjecting pandemic sport to a sociological procedure.
• Lyn Craig’s research on Coronavirus, domestic labour and care: Gendered roles locked down has been published in the Journal of Sociology and featured on the Seriously Social podcast.
• Raewyn Connell has been published in the Journal of Sociology on the sociological discussions around COVID-19.
• Mark Finnane (Griffith University) has published two readily accessible items from continuing work on the history of the 1919 pandemic and Australian legal and governmental responses to it: States of emergency and Collateral damage.
• Kevin J. Fox (UNSW) and Erwin Diewert (University of British Columbia, UNSW and NBER) co-authored a paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research “Measuring Real Consumption and CPI Bias under Lockdown Conditions’ which concludes that the only way to produce a meaningful CPI within the lockdown period is through establishing a continuous consumer expenditure survey.
• Bruce Chapman (ANU) co-authored a paper ‘Revenue Contingent Loans for COVID-19 Economic Recovery’ which explores how the potential of RCL could lead to a way in which capital begins flowing to the many small businesses that can drive economic recovery.
• Deborah Lupton (UNSW) edited a special section of Health Sociology Review on ‘Sociology and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic’ – the issue is currently open access, and there’s and long and short video available that promote it.
• Stanley Cho (UNSW) has published an analysis of the spread of COVID-19 in Sweden , showing that if containment policies similar to those in Australia had been adopted, infection and mortality rates could have been reduced by 75% and 25% respectively.
• Xuemei Bai (ANU) and colleagues from around the world have published an article in Nature showing how some cities have managed to whether the storm of COVID in much better shape than others, and calling for cities to develop coordinated networks and to share information and disaster plans to increase resilience to future pandemics and shocks.
• Nichole Georgeou (Western Sydney University) and Charles Hawksley (University of Wollongong) recently edited the global report State Responses to COVID-19: a global snapshot at 1 June. The 136 page volume covers 43 country case studies from states and territories in Oceania, Asia, Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas assessing the public health, political and economic responses to the pandemic, plus an additional 10 papers on issues such as the plights of irregular migrants in Europe and health workers in the USA. State Responses to COVID-19 is freely available here. 
• Matt Sanders and his team from the University of Queensland have developed a comprehensive suite of resources to support parents and families during the pandemic, including a podcast, TV series (aired on Network 7) and additional supports through the Positive Parenting Program.
• Jennie Hudson and her team at Macquarie University have also released new resources for teachers and parents to help support the mental health of Australian children and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Philip Clarke (University of Melbourne) and colleagues published a piece in PharmacoEconomics titled How Should a Safe and Effective Vaccine be Allocated?
• Michael Quinlan from UNSW has been working with scholars across the fields of health, economics and labour relations arguing that COVID-19 is an unprecedented humanitarian crisis from which there can be no return to the ‘old normal’. Their paper is available here
• Deborah Lupton, Anthony Elliot and other colleagues contributed to “12 Perspectives on the Pandemic,12 international social science thought leaders reflect on the pandemic”, published as an open access pamphlet by the international publisher De Gruyter.
• Deborah Lupton also initiated an internationally popular crowdsourced resource on ‘Doing Fieldwork in a Pandemic’. Contributions have now closed, but the resource is available here and Deborah is also hosting a breaking methods webinar series here.
• Jolanda Jetten and colleagues published an edited book titled ‘Together Apart’ on the Psychology of COVID-19. Their publisher SAGE made the uncorrected proofs of the manuscript available immediately on submission and the document has been downloaded almost 20,000 times ahead of its mid-July publication.
• Mark Dodgson writes regular pieces for the World Economic Forum.  Two of his COVID-19-related articles are here: the first is about how an entrepreneurial approach can help in the COVID-19 crisis, while the second looks at university entrepreneurship in a post COVID world.

• The COVID-19 Expert Database – managed by the Australian Academy of Science includes details of many ASSA Fellows and other Australian experts. Social Scientists can also register their details with this database.
• The Rapid Research Information Forum of which the Academy is a member has produced a number of reports and evidence syntheses for Government Ministers. The Academy led the development of the report on learning outcomes for in-class vs online education
• The impact of COVID-19 on refugees and other forced migrants is being analysed on this COVID-19 Watch blog from the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW (Professor Jane McAdam is an Academy Fellow).  The site provides a hub for expert analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on the world’s displaced people, sharing insights and analysis from scholars, humanitarians, practitioners and refugees themselves.
• The International Science Council (ISC) alongside the World Health Organization and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, launched their flagship report Unprecedented & Unfinished: COVID-19 and Implications for National and Global Policy: https://council.science/covid-19-scenarios/. The Academy is a proud member of the ISC.