Dr Lea Taragin-Zeller (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) draws on her research on COVID-19 to address the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on minority groups.
As COVID-19 shifted from East Asia to Europe and then to North America, public media began reporting the disproportionate effects of the pandemic on minority groups.
Although scholars have highlighted the ways science communication reifies existing forms of structural inequality, while primarily focusing on race, gender and disabilities, the particular challenges posed by science communication for religious minorities have received less attention.
In this talk, Dr Lea Taragin-Zeller draws on her research on COVID-19 among Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Israel to share five foundational lessons we can all utilise to globally promote inclusive science and health communication.
In partnership with BFHU (British Friends of the Hebrew University).
Lea Taragin-Zeller
Lea Taragin-Zeller is a social anthropologist with research interests in anthropology of religion, medical anthropology, gender and reproductive politics. She is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Public Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an affiliated scholar at the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc), University of Cambridge. Her work has appeared in American Anthropologist, Medical Anthropology and Science Communication.
Her first book “The State of Desire: Reorienting Religion and Reproductive Politics in the Promised Land” (forthcoming with NYU Press) ethnographically analyses the ways Orthodox Jews reorient conflicting social, religious, and national desires amidst shifting forms in Israel’s reproductive governance. More recently, she has been tracing the impact of COVID-19 on religious minority groups while developing a model of inclusive science and health communication in Israel.
