ROM Ideas: Pandemic Research

Discover how ROM research and researchers impact the world around us in this series of exciting short talks highlighting the Museum’s role in engaging with and documenting these extraordinary times.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unique challenges for biological research that relies on global travel. Explore how a year of disruptions will have wide-ranging impacts on the study of the world around us, featuring ROM’s Curator of Invertebrates and evolutionary biologist Sebastian Kvist.

To meet the challenges of group living, human beings have evolved a desire for fairness. The peculiarities of this desire can have an impact on our decision-making in many different ways, including the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Explore how anthropology can help us unravel human behavioural patterns during a global pandemic with the ROM’s Senior Curator of Latin American Archaeology, Justin Jennings.

Discover the ROM’s role in ongoing broad-based medical research with this discussion on how the Museum contributed to Western University’s efforts to create a vaccine bank for future coronavirus outbreaks.

With a unique lens on the world around us, cultural institutions like the ROM play an integral role in recording living history. Explore the ongoing work of a diverse team of ROM curators to reflect on the impact of face masks during the global health crisis, and how this phenomenon will inform how we view fashion and cultural change.