How can History Prepare us for a Future Pandemic?
Dr Chris Colvin at Queen’s Business School hosted a workshop to foster dialogue between economists and social scientists conducting disciplinary research into the causes, anatomy and consequences of health emergencies, today and in the past.
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a vast expansion in academic research output into health crises. But most of this research is conducted by scholars within their disciplinary silos. Discipline-specific language and publishing norms means we are often unaware of relevant research from colleagues in other fields.
Earlier this year, Queen's Business School brought together economists, historians and other social scientists to discuss how past pandemics can help us to prepare for the future.
The workshop was organised jointly by the Centre for Health Research at the Management School (CHARMS) and Queen’s University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH), both research centres based at Queen's Management School.
This in-person event was held at Clifton House, Belfast's historic poor house, constructed by the Belfast Charitable Society in 1774, and the location of the first trials of inoculation and vaccination in Ireland in 1800.
Keynote speakers at the event were:
- Guido Alfani, Professor of Economic History at Bocconi University, Milan
- Erica Charters, Professor of the Global History of Medicine at the University of Oxford
- Maarten Lindeboom, Professor of Economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
The workshop was closed with a policy roundtable on economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, featuring, among others, Ian Davidson from the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland.
The workshop took place on 26 and 27 May 2022. The workshop’s organising committee constituted QBS academics Aldo Elizalde, Arcangelo Dimico and Chris Colvin. A full programme can be downloaded here.
