THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GLOBAL CRISES For academics, the changes brought by the Covid-19 pandemic extended beyond the Spring semester and into conference season. AUP’s first-ever online conference offered a new way to engage with colleagues’ research. The professional lives of AUP’s faculty have faced a two-pronged assault from the Covid-19 pandemic: not only have professors had to navigate the seismic shift to remote teaching practices, they have also faced unprecedented disruption to their research and networking plans. Travel bans and socialdistancing measures have led to canceled conferences all over the world, as academics have seen time they would usually spend presenting research become periods of forced isolation. Ever resourceful, AUP’s faculty have nonetheless found a way to regroup and turn the challenges of the present moment into exciting opportunities. One of the results
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has been the University’s first-ever online conference: The Psychology of Global Crises. “The initial idea was a relatively primitive reaction to the situation we were in,” explains Martin Dege, a former AUP professor who co-organized the event back in May 2020. Finding himself in confinement in Cairo, Dege concluded that, despite public health restrictions, colleagues would be eager to gather virtually to discuss their research. The chosen topic would also help academics make sense of a complex and still-evolving historical moment. Dege reached out to colleagues across the world, forming a group of 14 co-organizers, which included fellow AUP professor Maria Medved. Organizers were keen to allow speakers the flexibility to discuss a wide range of crises, though Covid-19 understandably dominated the discourse. “It was a topic that was just so needed at the time,” says Medved. “The
pandemic has amplified problems and inequities, bringing to the fore all these things we try to sweep under the carpet.” The scope of the topic was such that the call for submissions elicited an interdisciplinary response, with sociologists, anthropologists and ethnographers attending alongside psychologists. An online conference also allowed for greater technical flexibility than an in-person event. “The idea was to organize something that people could still recognize, while adding benefits that you wouldn’t get from a major in-person conference,” explains Dege. Given that there was no need for a venue, organizers extended the conference to ten days to maximize participation. Talks ran over a 16hour period, which not only accommodated speakers in multiple time zones, but also allowed organizers to avoid simultaneous talks; an attendee could, in theory, participate in every discussion and panel. “We were in Paris, but simultaneously everywhere on Earth,” says Dege.
