What the Pandemic taught us about Technologies, & vice-versa: Viral Missives from Hong Kong & New Delhi
Fri, Feb 7, 2025
5:00 PM–7:00 PM
The Skylight Room (9100), CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC.Free and open to all.

Pandemics persist. They recede, are managed, resurface, mutate, and become endemic so that what was once seen as a threat becomes a part of our viral and microbial ecosystems. Biological pandemics are managed by technologies. Long after the effects of the pandemics recede, the technologies used to manage them become a part of our social and political organization. Organized by Professor Alexandra Juhasz and featuring Nishant Shah, this talk draws from collaborative community workshops in Hong Kong and New Delhi to combine story-telling, contextualization, and re-mediation of the global experiences of the COVID19 pandemic. In the process it invites reflection on the changing nature of technologies, how they were shaped in the localised management of the global pandemic, and what this means for our present and future of coming and being together.
More about the speaker
Nishant Shah is Professor of Global Media and Director of the Digital Narratives Studio at the School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was the founder of the Center for Internet & Society, India, the Director of the Digital School at Leuphana University, Germany, and Vice-President at ArtEZ University of the Arts, The Netherlands. His work attempts to bring together critical mobilisation of theoretical and material resources to serve communities engaged in gender, sexuality, and social justice unsettled by digital technological advancements. His last two co-authored books Really Fake (2021) & Overload, Creep, Excess: An Internet from India (2023) are both available for open access.

This event is free and open to all. With support from: Social Practice CUNY, Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Grad Center, GC Digital Initiatives, The Futures Initiative, and Art and Science Connect CUNY.