Why we need more help to support each other post-COVID

Over the last year LSE's Shaping the Post-COVID World initiative has explored the direction the world could, and should, be taking after the pandemic. In this special piece, Nikita Simpson and Laura Bear from LSE's COVID and Care Research Group reflect on their work over the course of the pandemic on inequality and social infrastructure, and set out the actions the government needs to take for communities to recover.

SHORT FILM The Call Centre: the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on marginalised communities

Research was conducted by the LSE COVID and Care Research Group including Laura Bear, Nikita Simpson, Caroline Bazambanza, Rebecca E. Bowers, Atiya Kamal, Anishka Gheewala Lohiya, Alice Pearson, Jordan Vieira, Connor Watt and Milena Wuerth.

The Social infrastructures for the post-Covid recovery in the UK report is based on 13 months (April 2020 to April 2021) of ongoing anthropological research conducted collectively and collaboratively by the COVID and Care Research Group. In May 2021, they launched an online survey with the aim of gaining wider insights into the emergent themes of the Research Group’s ethnographic inquiries that gained 2,170 responses.

Images credit: Grey Hutton/National Geographic Society COVID-19 Emergency Fund