In the run up to the Webinar Conference Roundtable, Coronavirus and International Relations, a number of participants and contributors agreed to give short interviews around the conference themes and their own interventions. All Zoom interviews will be posted to the Coalition for Peace and Ethics You Tube Channel COVID-19 Conference Playlist. For our first interview, Flora Sapio spoke to the issues of COVID-19 in Italy and its wider implication. For our second interview, Larry Catá Backer spoke of COVID-19 and meaning making. Yuri Gonzalez was interviewed about COVID-19 and the developing situation in Cuba, which has been able to project medical assistance outward even as it faces the challenges of a developing state. Alice Hong provided insight on COVID-19 from the perspective of a foreign student in the US. GAO Shan spoke to the way that the COVID-19 pandemic from a comparative context of Wuhan (where his family lives) and the US Midwest (where he now resides). Keren Wang considered the ways in which each system framed the pandemic in ways that could be understood, noting how differences in those understandings could produce very different responses. Jonathan Kiwana spoke to issues of COVID-19 and Africa, focusing on Uganda and the region. And Pini Miretski spoke to the situation in Russia, Israel and states of the former Soviet Union.
For our next interview, Nicolas Scholz spoke to the situation in Germany, a federal Republic with its own brand of center-periphery issues that are different from that between the US States and federal government. He spoke as well to COVID-19 from a European historical perspective, situating it within a century of shocks that adds perspective. And he considered the implications of COVID19 on social cohesion pulled between nationalism and globalization. Lastly he considered the way that COVID-19 might play a role in the contradictions between politics and administration, reacting to the debating point: does COVID-19 inaugurate the age of the technocrat and institutional administrator displacing the political actors at the center of the organization of the state. Dr. Scholz is an independent researcher. Graduate of Ludwig Maximilians University (Munich) (MS 2018) with experience in Emerging Security Challenges Division, NATO (2019); Sino-German Cooperation Industrie 4.0 (2018-2019); Konrad Adenauer Siftung (2016) . Web Information here.
