Faculty of Arts and Humanities

School of Humanities

Image: Project picture

Academic Year: 2020-21

Project Leader: Felix Roesch

Partner University(s)/Organisation(s): Hosei University (Japan)

Project Overview:

Since the end of 2019, the world as we know it came to a halt. Many things that we took for granted like travelling or simply going to classes were no longer possible or at least entailed significant health risks. This is supposed to be the new normal, but the world will eventually come back to the old normal and hopefully will have taken the right clues on how to minimize the risks of such pandemics to happen again.

To understand what was happening around us and to learn how countries responded to Covid-19 and developed strategies to deal with it, students from Coventry and Tokyo virtually joined forces.

The aim of this project was to gain a comprehensive overview of political responses to the Covid-19 pandemic around the globe. To do so we investigated the following:

  • What strategies are pursued and how affective are they?
  • Who are the key actors in producing responses?
  • Which ethical positions are taken by political decision-makers in producing responses to the pandemic?
  • Which people are affected by the pandemic most and what does this tell us about political systems and cultures?
  • What could political communities around the world do better to improve the situation?

Students participating in our project were asked to form groups to investigate responses to Covid-19 in a country of their choice with the aim to produce an online presentation. These presentations served as the basis for discussions during our weekly joint live sessions. Each group consisted of students from both universities and presentations were delivered as power-point presentations via Zoom.

Online Tools Used: Email, Open Moodle, Zoom

In addition to the presentations, the project leads wrote with several students a paper about the use of COIL projects for studying International Relations. This paper has been published as “Un(COIL)ing the Pandemic: Active and Affective Learning in Times of Covid-19” in PS: Political Science & Politics, an official journal of the American Political Science Association.

Un(COIL)ing the Pandemic: Active and Affective Learning in Times of COVID-19 | PS: Political Science & Politics | Cambridge Core