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Head to Lothian Lockdown: The Lothian Diary Project to check out more about this project, led by Lauren Hall-Lew.
The Lothian Diary Project: sociolinguistic methods during the COVID-19 lockdown (with Lauren Hall-Lew, Claire Cowie, Catherine Lai, Nina Markl, Stephen Joseph McNulty, Clare Llewellyn, Beatrice Alex, Zuzana Elliott and Anita Klingler)
Published in Linguistics Vanguard
The Lothian Diary Project is an interdisciplinary effort to collect self-recorded audio or video diaries of people’s experiences of COVID-19 in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. In this paper we describe how the project emerged from a desire to support community members. The diaries have been disseminated through public events, a website, an oral history project, and engagement with policymakers. The data collection method encouraged the participation of people with disabilities, racialized individuals, immigrants, and low-proficiency English/Scots speakers, all of whom are more likely to be negatively affected by COVID-19. This is of interest to sociolinguists, given that these groups have been under-represented in previous studies of linguistic variation in Edinburgh. We detail our programme of partnering with local charities to help ensure that digitally disadvantaged groups and their caregivers are represented. Accompanying survey and demographic data means that this self-recorded speech can be used to complement existing Edinburgh speech corpora. Additional sociolinguistic goals include a narrative analysis and a stylistic analysis, to characterize how different people engage creatively with the act of creating a COVID-19 diary, especially as compared to vlogs and other video diaries.
The Lothian Diary Project: Investigating the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Edinburgh and Lothian Residents (with Lauren Hall-Lew, Claire Cowie, Stephen Joseph McNulty, Nina Markl, Catherine Lai, Clare Llewellyn, Beatrice Alex, Nini Fang, Zuzana Elliot, and Anita Klingler)
Published in the Journal of Humanities Data
The ongoing Lothian Diary Project consists of 125+ audio/video recordings collected since May 2020 from residents of Edinburgh and the Lothian counties in Scotland. The diaries comprise self-recorded monologues or semi-structured interviews in which participants discuss their experiences during different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recordings were uploaded to an online survey that also collected consent, demographic information, and opinion regarding Covid-related policies. All data marked for reuse are and will be housed in the University of Edinburgh’s DataShare and DataVault repositories. A partial deposit is available now and another will be made available upon completion of data collection. Data from consenting participants will form an oral history archive with Museums and Galleries, Edinburgh.
Lockdown in the Lothians: Insights from the Lothian Diary Project (with Lauren Hall-Lew, Stephen McNulty, Nina Markl, Catherine Lai, Beatrice Alex, Clare Llewellyn, and Karri Gillespie Smith)
Stigmatizing the already stigmatized: Destigmatization of the LGBT+ Community as a solution for COVID-19
Published in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Equality and Diversity
Stigma attached to the LGBT+ community is historically rooted, as demonstrated by the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Yet, little is known about the role of sexuality in individuals’ experiences with the current COVID-19 pandemic, especially in dealing with State responses to the outbreak. Using South Korea as a case study, this article examines how the LGBT+ community has become scapegoats and become even more excluded from the healthcare system during the current crisis than they were before. Drawing on queer, feminist, and stigma theories, this article argues that structural destigmatization can be a short-term, as well as a long-term solution for health emergencies. It offers important implications for states and societies for how to more efficiently and effectively prevent future outbreaks and protect the health and wellbeing of marginalized groups.
Coronavirus and Representative Democracy (with Stephen Elstub and Maarja Luhiste)
Published in Representation: A Journal of Representative Democracy