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I am a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. I am currently in (or around) Austin, Texas conducting fieldwork for my dissertation on the science and politics of transitioning to renewable energy resources in Austin, Texas. I have helped design and undertake geographically dispersed and collaborative PECE projects that have investigated toxic subjects and places, transnational sts, and quotidian anthropocenes. I can be reached by email at jradams1@uci.edu.

I am also a part of the Energy in COVID-19 Research Group that is a thematic subgroup of the larger Transnational STS COVID-19 Project. In this group we focus on how energy consumption, services, production, and futures have been impacted by the current pandemic.

The transnational STS COVID-19 project also intersects with my work at the level of city-scale questions pertaining to how COVID-19 related policies and practices are impacting and influencing strategies and processes of political engagement.  Accordingly, out of the project-wide analytic, I have been focusing on the following questions:

How is ‘social distancing’ practiced and interpreted in different COVID-19 settings?

How is the aftermath of COVID-19 crisis being imagined in different settings? How is this shaping beliefs, practices, and policies?

Context: Currently, I´m based in Bogota, Colombia´s capital city of 8 million people. At the beginning of March, the government informed about the first COVID-19 case in the country, a young woman who came back from a trip to Italy. The 19th, with less than 30 confirmed cases, Bogota declared a provisional and pedagogical quarantine for a weekend. Around a dozen of cities followed Bogota´s initiative, living with few choices the central government to take a different approach. On March 23 the President declared national state of emergency, and extending a national quarantine, with few exceptions (medical staff, public servants, police and military forces, inner city transportation, among others). After a month under quarantine we have witnessed a strong support to the central government, a national coordination approach few times seen in the country. Political opposition forces and the Congress have been behind the scenes. News networks have displayed an enourmous time to medical, epidemiological, health and scientific experts. President and local leaders speak to the public nearby or citing experts from top scientific institutions. Epidemiological models are shaping decisions about when to go out, who can go out, and how normal life can be retake.

Analytical approach: I am analyzing how COVID-19 governance is taking place in Colombia, through the participation of scientific experts. I am concerned about how scientific data and information are displayed and communicated, focusing on health and epidemiological issues. I am interested in foolowing how other researchers analyze data platforms, transparency issues, and the articulation between health safety and inequality and economic impact.

Contact: awx1111@gmail.com