Participate in SOAS Research on Covid-19: We want to hear from you!

5 March 2021

The SSAI is participating in a major project run by SOAS and funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to examine Covid-19 public health information in London. Our role focuses on South Asian language communities. We are excited to be part of this important study and encourage you to participate.

Led by Dr Nana Sato-Rossberg, and supported by Dr Yan Jiang, Professor Lutz Marten, and Professor Edward Simpson, the project involves a team of 14 SOAS language and culture experts investigating how information about Covid-19 is received and understood in a range of linguistic communities across London.

We aim to understand how news and information flows through personal and family networks and traditional and social media on Covid-19. We believe that language and understanding of culture are both crucial in understanding different responses to the pandemic.

The project as a whole is looking at Standard Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Turkish, Urdu, Somali, Swahili, and Yoruba. The project will collect, document, and synthesize individual accounts, information in the target languages published in London, and information available to community members from their (historical) home countries, their governments and on social media.

To participate in a general survey (the survey is anonymous with the opt in option of us getting in touch with you for a further conversation) click here

For further conversations about specific language communities please contact:

Hindu and Urdu: Dr David Lunn: email: dl24@soas.ac.uk

Punjabi: Naresh Sharma: email: ns19@soas.ac.uk

Bengali: Dr Amy Parsons: email: ap93@soas.ac.uk