key: cord-0064592-jkm1l3ub
authors: Stratford, Elaine
title: Is this the COVID decade?
date: 2021-05-13
journal: nan
DOI: 10.1111/1745-5871.12480
sha: d66bee3865f01af2bc049b0cc18c50c7229135cb
doc_id: 64592
cord_uid: jkm1l3ub

nan

I subscribe to Stuart Elden's blog, Progressive Geographies, and there, on 13 April, read a post about the British Academy's 2021 independently commissioned review on the long-term societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, recently submitted to the UK Government Office for Science. Not surprisingly, the lede in the Academy's summary website referred to how crises such as pandemics may precipitate dramatic forms of innovation and change-if there is sufficient integration across tiers of government and between governments and other sectors, and if there is something akin to a unifying vision. In that opening gambit, the Academy also noted that this particular pandemic will have a long tail. As just one example of that observation, I think we now know that the epidemiological, social, economic, and spatial complications of the international vaccination programs are extremely challenging in their variations.

The British Academy review has emphasised three areas of specific concern that are also strongly in evidence in Australia and in other jurisdictions. The first is the undeniably central importance of health and wellbeing, and the need to find ways to increase them both rather than see them diminish in the face of the pandemic itself and its correlate and consequent effects. If I contain my comments to just one segment of one sector, my wish would be that, collectively, we establish novel approaches to supporting the health and wellbeing of our early career academics (ECAs). To that end, with two colleagues-Brett Paull and Phillipa Watson-I have instigated a 12-month study of/with/for ECAs in the University of Tasmania's College of Sciences and Engineering to map and then address their experiences of this stage of their careers. That study joins a growing number of such works around the world (see, for example, Anderson, Gatwiri, & Townsend-Cross, 2020; Aprile, Ellem, & Lole, 2020; Bosanquet, Mantai, & Fredericks, 2020; Clare, 2019; Oberhauser & Caretta, 2018) , some of which are increasingly focused on the pandemic.

The second concern examined by The British Academy embraces communities, culture[s], and belonging. Closely paraphrasing the report, its focus is upon elements of sociospatial life that bind:

• community responses and responsiveness to helping in crises;

• voluntarism and mutual aid;

• the capacity to work trustingly and cohesively, including with governments and the media • the centrality of sense of place, of our settlements, and of our dwellings-and consideration of their lack and the precarity that characterises them; • justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion-or what the Academy refers to as "race, ethnicity, immigration and prejudice;" and • the gentle glue that can be provided by cultural, artistic, and sporting pursuits.

The third concern on which The British Academy touches relates to primary, secondary, and post-secondary education, skills, knowledge and research, and work and employment [this is also a close paraphrase from the summary website for the report]. I think it noteworthy that many of our already-published and pending special commentaries on the geographies of COVID-19 focus on elements of these three concerns.

In the final analysis, the review provided for the UK Government Office of Science resonates with conditions in similar jurisdictions and leaves open many questions about other registers of affect and effect elsewhere. Certainly, the nine long-term impacts to which the review points suggest a research agenda that I think should shape at least some of what we turn our attention to in coming years (also paraphrased here from the summary website):

1. increased importance of local communities; 2. low and unstable levels of trust in governance; 3. widening geographical inequalities; 4. exacerbated structural inequalities; 5. worsened health outcomes and growing health inequalities; 6. greater awareness of the importance of mental health; 7. pressure on revenue streams across the economy; 8. rising unemployment and changing labour markets; and 9. renewed awareness of education and skills.

In writing these nine points out, I confess a strong desire to try and invert and reframe some of those statements-for which I would be prepared to be called Pollyanna, that storybook character with an unfailingly optimistic outlook. So as well as increasing the importance of local communities, can we continue to reach out across borders? As well as acknowledging diminished trust in government, can we find ways to rebuilt it? How can we support each other as geographers in a global community to stay energised and address inequities? How are we all modelling self care? Such acts of reframing, such invocations of hope, are perhaps something to which we should pay more exacting attention?

And now on to other matters.

A little news about the Institute's 2021 annual conference

Without doubt, among the most important items of news to convey is that the Institute of Australian Geographers annual conference will be held from 6 to 9 July both in Sydney and virtually. The conference theme is Remembering, Reimagining Geography and that has been selected to provide an opportunity for those attending in person or online to critically consider the evolution of geography as a discipline and to ask how it can contribute to more just and sustainable futures, including for the more-than-human world. As Phil McManus, conference host, has noted, the first step in that work is "acknowledging that Indigenous ownership of this continent is important given the history of Geography as a discipline." As well as keynote lectures-including our own Wiley Lecture and the Fay Gale Memorial Lecture, so important to this journal-there will be themed sessions led by study groups, general sessions, fieldtrips, and virtual fieldtrips, as well as meetings and side events. Importantly, 2021 marks the centenary of the first university geography program in Australia at the University of Sydney. Finally, I have been asked to note that registration costs are reduced significantly, recognising that many people attending have precarious incomes given the austerity measures that have accompanied the pandemic.

This issue, we feature one of our occasional "Antipodean perspectives" essays. These special articles are invited (and still subject to blind peer review) and their authors are recognised as leaders in their subfields. Here, David Bissell has reflected on how the geographies of COVID-19 are global, looped, capsular, uncertain, and geographical senses of place. It is noteworthy, I think, that Bissell (this issue) underscores the following crucial points:

… rather than retreat into our individual bunkers, we need to remember to appreciate how our disciplinary sense of place as geographers is utterly reliant on each other, on our community ... We enact this valuing of each other in so many ways already … [and can continue] to do all we can to affirm our unique sense of place as a geographical community by cultivating our collegiality, standing up for each other, and reaching out.

We also bring together several commentaries in our ongoing series on COVID-19. These works range widely across Indigenous ways of knowing (Smith et al.) ; the global geopolitics of public health (Cole and Dodds); the ways in which the pandemic is constituting national narratives of rurality, isolation, and islandness in Tuvalu (Farbotko); the capacity for urban governance innovations during the pandemic (McGuirk et al.) ; the virus's effects on the shifting industrial landscapes-most specifically that of Port Kembla in New South Wales (Gibson et al.) ; the ways in which Australian fashion's geographies are being reshaped as a result of ; and the manner in which this extraordinary period has given effect to autoethnographic reflections on locality, scale, and the body (Burton). These commentaries have been fascinating reading for the editorial team, and we are delighted that more are on the way. In time, we will assemble them into one virtual issue and provide a more extended set of observations about them in total (and I look forward to that work with Dallas Rogers and Matthew Kearnes in due course). In addition to these rich offerings on the geographies of COVID-19, we feature several important original articles. Christine Eriksen and Eliza de Vet have provided an incisive analysis of what is involved in untangling insurance as people seek to rebuilt their properties and sense of wellbeing after bushfires. Rupert Legg has offered a perceptive essay on the legal geography of the regulation of PFAS contaminated land in Williamtown in New South Wales, focusing on the complex sociospatial and legal dynamics of cross-border flows of contaminants, and pointing to the need for regulatory reforms as a result. Considering how migrants encounter lifestyle destinations, Caitlin Buckle has used narrative, visual, and virtual visitation methods to explore ideas about the coastal idyll to ask how positive place experiences can be protected in the face of pressures to increase urban development in Maroochydore in Queensland. Then, basing their work on Los Arenales in Antofagasta, Chile, Francisco Vergara-Perucich and Martin Arias-Loyola present an analysis of community mapping with a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) in informal settlements. In the process, they share important insights about how PPGIS processes facilitate collective engagement on crucial aspects of urban governance in conditions of precarity. In the last of the original articles, Chen Yang and colleagues provide a fascinating account of how, in the World Heritage listed site, Slender West Lake Scenic and Historic Interest Area, different stakeholders understand what authenticity means in and for historic landscapes in China. They suggest there is need for a dialectical approach to foster creative cultural practices that respect landscape conservation.

Battling the "headwinds": The experiences of minoritised academics in the neoliberal Australian university

Publish, perish, or pursue? Early career academics' perspectives on demands for research productivity in regional universities

Deferred time in the neoliberal university: Experiences of doctoral candidates and early career academics. Teaching in Higher Education

Can the failure speak? Militant failure in the academy

Mentoring early career women geographers in the neoliberal academy: Dialogue, reflexivity, and ethics of care

The COVID Decade: Understanding the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19

Elaine Stratford, Editor-in-Chief