Last week on Thursday, October 22nd, we held our first Connect.ed Conversation. It was the first event of a monthly series aimed at promoting interdisciplinary discussions on current events. For the month of October, it seemed only fitting that we open a dialogue on the topic of COVID-19, as all of us have been affected by it in one way or another.
We began our conversation with a question: Is there, as Mark Jackson, Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Exeter, so decisively stated, ‘‘arguably no more important object of historical enquiry than the fluctuating manifestations and meanings of disease”? By the end of the hour, I think most of us would have answered with a “yes”. As we discovered through our discussion, COVID-19 is not just a pandemic in the healthcare sense of the word; it is also a pandemic of misinformation, racism, and economic inequality - each demanding our full attention. It is a long-overdue call for the blinders to come off. Where else would a conversation about a global crisis begin but on the topic of governments? Given their role in allocating resources in the protection and promotion of their citizens’ interests, governments are arguably the most important player in a widespread pandemic. We discussed the struggle of finding the balance between expecting the government to fulfil the responsibilities they were elected on while understanding that they are also just people like us, overwhelmed at the situation facing them. This theme of empathy was a common thread throughout the rest of our conversation. However, we came to an understanding that there is a level of preparedness that governments and healthcare systems need to maintain. While it is difficult to know the proper course of action we should take in the face of COVID-19, a novel virus, there are ways to learn from past outbreaks of similar viruses. SARS and MERS are examples that could and should have been learned from, even in countries which did not experience those previous outbreaks. There are many reasons for this, including issues regarding misinformation, international cooperation in the healthcare sector, and lack of domestic funding for public health. Regardless, pandemic preparedness is evidently important and, unfortunately, evidently absent in many countries. As such, when the pandemic began, solutions had to be found quickly amidst new rules about social distancing and staying-at-home. Many sectors turned to technology. In our discussion, we looked specifically at healthcare and education, sharing information from our personal experiences in addition to news articles that we had come across. Although we appreciated that short-term solutions can be found in technology and innovation, there was a consensus that we are still a society fundamentally in need of face-to-face human connection. More importantly, however, the turn to technology poses a larger issue - the issue of inequality. Not only are minority and low-income communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 at staggering infection and death rates, but they are also excluded from the supposed solutions due to their lack of access to technology. As one of the participants articulated perfectly, “we are encouraged to see inequality as natural.” Therefore, although it took a global pandemic for many to be exposed to the reality of racism and economic inequality, still not enough action is being taken to work towards eliminating it. Our conversation concluded with an observation about the importance of mindset. It is less about how strict the rules are and more about the way people act, especially where enforceability is little to none. After pointing out how mindsets differ from culture to culture, we descended into an extensive sharing session about how we have personally been coping on a mental health front. We discussed being separated from our families, the frustrations of trying to do the right thing amidst a sea of rule-breakers, and social media’s detrimental role in enabling us to make comparisons about our productivity levels to those of our friends and acquaintances. But as we had brought up at the start, it is empathy that ultimately prevails. We planned and created Connect.ed Conversations with exactly that goal in mind - to foster empathy and understanding through conversation from varying perspectives. Thank you to everyone who joined us last week. We hope you learned as much as we did and we look forward to connecting with you all again at our next Connect.ed Conversation.
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Welcome to UCL Connect.ed
We are a community of students with a love of learning. Our motto is Non Scholae Vitae Discimus ~ ‘We do not learn for school, but for life’, and this thought is our inspiration. If this thought is our inspiration, then it is our values that guide our action. We want to facilitate impactful academic research and discussion. We want everything that we do to be sustainable, both in its impact on the planet and in its impact on us as a society. Above all, we want to develop our community. Everything we do this year will align with these values. You know our inspiration and the values that guide our actions. Now let me tell you our plan. A focus on our past UCL Connect.ed has a past. It is a past made up of all those who have been a part of the society before. This year we will be reaching out to these individuals, inviting them to be part of our newly established Connect.ed Almuni. We want to create a community that does not end with each research project, year, or degree; we want to create a community that is there for you even after university. A focus on our present Our Flagship Event is our Research Mentorship Program. Here, we connect undergraduate students keen to gain research experience, with undergraduate and postgraduate researches, looking for a helping hand, or the chance to develop their own mentorship skills. This offers a great opportunity to all, whatever stage you are at in your academic journey. However, this year we are planning an even wider range of events. We will for example, be hosting our Connect.ed Conversations; roundtables aimed at promoting interdisciplinary discussions on current events. Our first is on October 22nd where we will be discussing COVID-19 from a range of viewpoints. Alongside our academic events we will also be hosting a really enjoyable set of social events. From quizzes to informal chats, we will be doing all we can to keep our community connected beyond the academic work it is doing. A focus on our future We also want to do what we can to help and prepare our community for the future. This year, UCL Connect.ed aims to build up a range of partners from think tanks to research institutions, who align with our own values as a society. We will be releasing more on this soon, so be sure to keep an eye out. UCL Connect.ed is going to have its biggest year so far, and we would love to have you join us on what will be a very exciting journey. Kaushik Rai Interim President UCL Connect.ed This year, we are recruiting 5 - 10 Blog Editors to make up the UCL Connect.ed Blog Team! We are revamping the blog and would love to have you onboard to work with us.
Apply here: forms.gle/1vxYJs61wu5p5sS49 A message from the Editor-In-Chief: The UCL Connect.ed Blog Team will form a subcommittee of sorts and be in charge of operating one of the entities within the society. Given that this platform is so new, there is plenty of space for suggestions and initiatives - no idea is a bad idea! Our main mission is to create a hub of conversation, where academic topics - big or small - are celebrated and discussed within an interesting yet intellectual platform. The objectives are: (1) increase the audience and traffic to the blog and (2) increase opportunities for publishing on the blog. Once the team is established, we will refine and solidify our vision for the blog as a team. I am looking forward to meeting you (virtually) and, hopefully, working with you very soon! From, Zi |
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March 2021
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