Rapid response to study social impact of COVID-19

image of the fractal patterns in romanesco cabbage
June 11, 2020

How is the experience of COVID-19 transforming everyday life? How are we making sense of this moment on both a global and granular scale? Massive_Micro was launched as a research project to respond to the need for critical study of the lived experience and social impacts of the pandemic. This is a time-sensitive, 6-month project to collaboratively generate rich autoethnographic accounts of the impact of life under pandemic conditions even as these change.

The project is led by new DERC Professor Annette Markham and veteran DERC researcher Anna Harris. Following an April 21 call for proposals, more than 150 artists, activists, and social researchers responded.

This project exemplifies creative, massive collaborative autoethnography in rapid response to how the pandemic is changing our everyday lives. The first step was to launch a “21 day autoethnography challenge”, consisting of a daily prompt to consider three research questions:

  1. How are we making sense of the Self, our relationships, and the world around us?
  2. How is COVID-19 helping us think about the relationships between humans, machines, and the planet?
  3. Through this pandemic, how might we understand the relation between massive and microscopic sensibilities and ways of knowing?

Follow the progress of this experimental initiative on Twitter or Instagram hashtag: #massive_micro

image of the fractal patterns in romanesco cabbage