Aims and Objectives

Cov19: Chronicles from the Margins is an arts-based digital ethnography.

Through participatory, creative methods, we are creatively chronicling Covid-19 and will:

• collect digital “cultural artefacts” created and/or exchanged on smartphones among asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented groups and/or posted on social media – photos, videos, diaries, audio, music and podcasts, texts, whatsapp messages, written testimonies and tales, memes and hashtags, poems or songs.
• catalogue the cultural artefacts in a safe and private database to protect privacy.
• curate these cultural artefacts so that researchers and publics can access this archive both during the present crisis as well as in the future to bring to light the problems facing migrant groups and to inform policy, practice and academic knowledge create digital archive and exhibitions – a cultural collection representing responses to the crisis ‘from the margins’ in order to help identify and address gaps in provision and to document how the crisis is unfolding.
• communicate the research findings in our blogs (see blog section) and in briefing papers to support NGOs and charities to raise awareness among publics and policymakers of the many ways in which Covid-19 disproportionately affects not just asylum seekers but all people living in poverty and experiencing multiple forms of insecurity.
• circulate our academic findings in different networks with a focus on active citizenship and a recognition of rights and responsibilities.
• coproduce and share knowledge.