By Mirko Pasquini, PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University

Geijersalen, Engelska parken, Uppsala 2021-05-21 kl 10:00

From the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the level of patient saturation of Emergency Rooms (ERs) and Intensive Care Units (ICUs) and the lack of available beds was broadcast relentlessly, filling everyone with dread – not to say panic. Who is to be attended first? And how should such a decision be made? But, even though it made things worse, hospital overcrowding is not a new phenomenon that the pandemic brought.

In my ethnographic research, I explore the everyday life of an Italian ER as a place where urgency is at stake; caught up in and contested, by competing understandings. Here, mistrust is fueled against medical authorities, and violence often sparks in its venues. But the ER is also a creative social space where productive negotiations of more equitable ways to distribute care take place amid ER staff and suffering people struggling for social justice.

Read more and about other doctoral dissertations

For more information and practicalities regarding Mirko’s public PhD defense, please contact Sverker Finnström, Dir of Studies 3rd Cycle.

Läs vad institutionens forskare fokuserar på med anledning av coronaviruset.

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