Monkeypox

As the pandemic continued to rage through 2022, the World Health Organization declared monkeypox to be a public health emergency of international concern. Moving beyond the book’s focus on 2020, the series concludes by hearing from Dr João Florêncio, Professor Luna Dolezal, Dr Fred Cooper and Dr Arthur Rose on the challenges that monkeypox, COVID-19 and, before it, AIDS-HIV pose to habits of intimacy, sexuality and togetherness. What happens ‘after’ the pandemic, we conclude, is not just a matter for dealing with the ‘next’ outbreak, but the legacies of epidemics that have gone before.

To read more about João Florêcio’s work on AIDS and homophobia see his article in The Conversation; AIDS: homophobic and moralistic images of 1980s still haunt our view of HIV – that must change. Benjamin Weil’s article Poxed and Abandoned further discusses how these echoes have framed the global response to monkeypox. These themes are also elaborated in the BMJ opinion piece Blame and shame are harming our response to monkeypox. 

Thank you to Alice Waterson. Further thanks to Jennifer Allan, Ray Earwicker, João Florêncio, Tanisha Spratt and Nikita Simpson for contributing to the series. 

This podcast series is based on the research findings in the book Covid-19 and Shame: Political Emotions and Public Health in the UK, by Fred Cooper, Luna Dolezal and Arthur Rose.

This podcast series was funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant number AH/V013483/1.

Further support has come from the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health (WCCEH) at the University of Exeter, the Shame and Medicine project, the Scenes of Shame and Stigma in COVID-19 project and the Wellcome Trust grant number 217879/Z/19/Z.

Hosted by Paul McNally and produced by Develop Audio. 

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