Georgina Ferry interviews Anna Petherick, Associate Professor in Public Policy, 20 December 2021.
Topics discussed include (00:00:30) AP's early studies in Natural Sciences at Cambridge including population modelling and evolutionary genetics, role as a journalist in San Francisco working at the Economist in South America, MPhil and DPhil in Comparative Government at Oxford with Tim Power as supervisor; (00:02:46) research and journalism and how these complement one another; (00:03:50) AP's key drive behind academic research; (00:05:30) AP's first memories of COVID-19; (00:07:30) project working with Thomas Hale at the Blavatnik School, seminar and meetings to discuss this new project; (00:10:22) Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker; (00:13:20) the process involved, including using the coding manual; (00:15:44) research based upon the project; (00:17:30) research on behavioural and pandemic fatigue; (00:21:05) comparing countries for their different levels of trust in institutions and strangers; (00:23:56) funding for the project; (00:25:42) the collaborative nature of the research; (00:28:13) collaboration between institutions creating different datasets; (00:30:28) comparisons between countries or sub-state entities; (00:33:21) authoritarian countries and response to the pandemic; (00:35:12) economic ranking of countries and pandemic preparedness; (00:36:05) low and middle income countries that have performed well; (00:38:03) mitigator countries and eliminator countries; (00:40:04) direct influence on policy attributed to the project, including at the Cabinet Office; (00:41:11) the intensity of work during the pandemic; (00:43:00) consensus from the biomedical community; (00:47:49) recommendations and conclusions drawn from different policy approaches; (00:54:13) the need for a global exchange of data for climate change; (00:56:23) the personal impact of lockdown restrictions on work and research; (00:58:38) the level of support available for colleagues during the pandemic; (00:59:40) teaching both in-person and remotely with international students; (01:01:49) research questions of interest in the future; (01:02:25) future research interests, including the building back agenda; (01:05:03) opportunities afforded by this period for the empirical social sciences; (01:06:00) approach to work since the pandemic, including well-being, research practices and the credit system.
