The Virus Diaries: Travels in Alterrealities

Available on Amazon 

On 16 July 3580 Franz Nelson Moebius, lead scientist of the Gaia III mission on Earth, records a long message on the central database of Mars's Armageddon Colony, where humanity had to relocate when earth was declared unliveable. His message includes a selection of fragments from the 'Virocene': the long epoch humanity and earth entered when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic - one of the many viral onsets that would lead to the human species' relocation to Mars. Lost to plundering, political airbrushing and misplaced activism, the archives of the Virocene are now a strange hybrid of science fiction screenplays, distorted history and records of political espionage previously stored in Langley, London, the metropolitan headquarters of a network of Chinese colonies. Among them, Franz finds the Chronicles of the 'Daisy Rainbow Knights Order', a small anarchist cell comprised of Melissa Dreary, PVJB, SKA and TCE, which believes in a society free of the inequality sustained by authoritarianism and climate change. Its work on the invention of a master vaccine that will free humanity of hatred and illness is plotted in the context of progressive human rights repression and environmental pollution. Willing to risk everything, the cell's members decide to release their vaccine on the rift created between this world and the world of ancestral spirits, where, centuries into the Virocene, the government eliminated black populations protesting against inequality. However, the road to recovery and reconciliation proves as difficult as a coherent reading of the surviving records of the cosmogonic event that the Daisy Rainbow Knights Order set in motion with their actions: the 'Commemoration Troubles' of SARS-26-Covid 3004.The Virus Diaries unfolds as a collection of different stories that converge behind the idea of a social and environmental crisis, as this is narrated by several voices across millennia in the Virocene. Its central plot, which borrows from cinematic and discursive renditions of magical realism, science fiction and memory studies, forms an allegory of real problems that humanity and our planet face today.

Call for Blogposts, Northern Notes Blog, School of Sociology & Social Policy, Leeds

During April and May 2020, the Northern Notes Blog, a blog published by the School of Sociology and Social Policy (SSP) at the University of Leeds, is recruiting international scholars and final-year doctoral students to contribute to its ground-breaking series on the impact of the COVID-19 on society, culture and politics. We are looking for short contributions on a particular aspect of the contributor’s personal research that connects to the COVID-19 crisis. Country-specific proposals are most welcome, and area-specific ideas (e.g. tourism mobilities, social movements, art etc) are preferred. Thematically open but structured around the idea of cultural and/or societal crisis, these short posts will feature in the School’s official website and be advertised internationally by the University’s marketing team. For previous published posts and an overview of the School’s NNB programmatic statement please visit: https://northernnotes.leeds.ac.uk/about/

We welcome reactive posts. These posts are important for raising awareness of the contributor’s research expertise (and areas of non-academic impact), informing wider public debate of social scientific perspectives. The blog is overseen by an editorial team of academic staff. The core team includes Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli (Current Editor-in-Chief), Dr Roxana Barbulescu, Dr Sarah Marusek and Dr Abel Ugba, along with Director of Research, Dr Paul Baguley, Head of REF Dr Angharad Beckett and Head of School, Professor Bobby Sayyid.  All posts will be reviewed and copy-edited by the editorial team before publication.

Interested scholars, practitioners and doctoral students must have a mastery of English and a specific research agenda around which they will structure their blogpost (1,000-1,500 words). For initial expressions of interest please email Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli at r.tzanelli@leeds.ac.uk (email title: ‘NNB COVID-19 Series Expression of Interest’) with a 100-word abstract and a provisional title of your proposed blogpost. The deadline for accepting proposals is 15 May 2020.