05/10/20
 
About Curare Corona Diaries
A Collection of Diaries in the Strict Sense of the Term
On March 18, 2020, the editorial team of Curare. Journal of Medical Anthropology launched a call for (auto-) ethnographic Corona Diaries in the strict sense of the term which record what is happening in one’s own environment. More than 100 authors from at least 25 different countries participated in the project. The diaries will be […]

10/11/20
“I thought nothing would be worse than those bushfires.”
Australia, Canberra, 19 March – 11 May
My name is Morgan Harrington. I am 34 years old and I live in Canberra, Australia, the nation’s capital and the town I was born in. I live in an apartment with my girlfriend of 18 months and a dog named Blackjack. I work as an anthropologist for an independent consultancy. Our work is generally […]

08/11/20
“Better to be in quarantine on an island paradise than stay bored at home.”
Dominican Republic, 1 March – 20 March 2020
I’m an Austria-based cultural anthropologist with a research focus on forced migration, transnational memory cultures and Island Studies. For my postdoc project at the University of Art and Design Linz I travelled to the Dominican Republic to carry out ethnographic research on transgenerational family narratives and memory practices of Jewish exile in Sosúa. When the […]

07/11/20
“Outside on the street, we witnessed how in the matter of minutes, a queue of people that reached up to our store had formed in front of the coffee shop next door.”
Netherlands, Amsterdam, 20 March – 25 April 2020
My name is Alexandra, I am 26 years old and originally from Austria. I moved to Amsterdam two years ago to do my Master studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. I graduated from the program in February. Next to my studies, I have always worked in a small restaurant/take-out place […]

06/11/20
“Do you know how many people die every day of hunger in India? Of tuberculosis? Of rape? Of communal violence?”
India, Calcutta, 31 January – 07 May 2020
Somrita Urni Ganguly is a professor, and award-winning poet and literary translator. She was a Fulbright Doctoral Research Fellow at Brown University, Rhode Island. She is the editor of Quesadilla and Other Adventures: Food Poems (2019), and has translated Dinesh Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Firesongs (2019), Ashutosh Nadkar’s Shakuni: Master of the Game (2019), and Shankarlal Sengupta’s […]

05/11/20
“Life is now quiet and calm, during these days sometimes too quiet.” A diary dialogue
Austria, Vorarlberg, 25 March – 27 April 2020
  Who are we?   Johanna: I am a 55-year-old qualified social worker and a professor at the Department of Social Work and Health at the University of Applied Sciences Vorarlberg FHV in Austria. The county Vorarlberg is in the west of Austria, bordering Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. This is a rural area, surrounded by […]

04/11/20
“Can this be a time of healing, of solidarity, of art, or will I just go crazy?”
Germany, Berlin, 19 March – 2 May
Photo by Nadja Naemi I am a student of anthropology, living and currently situated in Berlin, although my family is from a different city. I have some experience with and very much enjoy writing, for instance I have a personal blog for travel stories. I am also a performer and part of a queer artist […]

03/11/20
“We are ‘in war’ with SARS-CoV-2/COVID 19.”
Prague, Czech Republic, 10 March – 15 June 2020
Corona diaries: dispatches from Prague We are a team of 3 researchers living in Prague (Czech Republic). In January 2020 we started to work on a new project concerned with human-microbial coexistence in the Czech Republic. To find a footing in the current crisis, we created a joint diary “Fieldnotes from the SARS-CoV-2 state of […]

02/11/20
“Humans are after all social animals and we need the social connection to function.”
Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15 March – 23 April 2020
My name is Jop Koopman, I am a social and cultural anthropologist who specialises in disasters and crises with an aerial focus on Indonesia. Currently I am a fellow researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where I am starting a PhD in the next academic year. The next section is a short summary of my […]

01/11/20
“Mate was not to be missed.”
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 15 March – 20 March 2020
  I am a PhD fellow of the Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) at the Center for Social Research (CIS) at the Institute of Economic and Social Development (IDES) in Argentina. I hold a Bachelor in Sociology from the University of San Martín (UNSAM). My doctoral research to obtain a PhD in Social […]

31/10/20
”I intended this diary to be about the world, but it turned out to be a snapshot of my consciousness.“
New York City, Lucedale, MS, Nashville, TN, 23 March – 22 June 2020
I am an anthropology candidate, and my goal to disembark the shores of the tropical Rio de Janeiro this summer for nine-month-long fieldwork has shattered into pieces. Unsettlement is what I am dealing with. Just before the COVID crisis, I returned from my home in Lithuania. I spent a couple of weeks with my mother […]