This talk will examine the nature of protest activity during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020-22. It does so as a case study of the impact of pandemics and epidemics on society – a familiar theme in the history of these phenomena – but it takes a rather different approach, drawing on insights from social psychology and employing new analytical techniques, based on direct observation of protests as well as other forms of evidence. It is argued that Covid-19 – or rather the response to it – had a more profound effect upon social and political life in the UK than any other pandemic or epidemic in modern history. Far more so than cholera, for example. The same is true of most other Western nations. But while historians have written much about the upheavals that accompanied cholera, they were largely silent during the recent pandemic when it came to the subject of social protest. Indeed, very few who lived through those times appreciate the extent and variety of protest activity that occurred. The effects of the pandemic were not only profound but long-lasting, serving as a midwife to new social and political identities. These observations have implications not only for how we think about the present but also how we think about previous epidemics – our blind-spots, pre-occupations and methodologies.

Mark Harrison is Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford and an Investigator at Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute

All welcome!