WELCOME!
You have reached the Dear Diary Illustrated Digital Archive!
This is the digital home of the research project Dear Diary: Equality Implications for Female Academics of Changes to Working Practices In Lockdown and Beyond. (Dear Diary for short!) Here you’ll find multiple accounts of living and working through 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020-September 2021) collected from female academics at UK universities. All illustrations were created in response to the data by Dr Kate Carruthers Thomas.
To help you organise your visit, research findings are structured in a series of themed ‘galleries’ (1-4 on the floorplan below); with each gallery further sub-divided into topics. Wander at will around the galleries or dive into a particular topic. If you’re not sure where to start, or only have a few minutes to spend, head to the Cabinet of Curiosities (7) to experience random, poignant and humorous aspects of participants’ accounts.
Once the site goes live, we’ll be adding material to the archive’s Resource Library (6). While you’re here – find out more about the Project (1) and before you go, please sign the Visitors’ Book (8) – we’d love your feedback!
MAIN FLOOR
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WORK/HOME
The sudden shift to working from home in March 2020 wrought profound changes in academics’ working practices. The archives exhibited in this gallery reflect on relationships between ‘work’ and ‘home’, which have been intensified, complicated and changed by the COVID-19 pandemic.READ MORE
SPACE/TIME
The archives exhibited in this gallery focus on the ways space and time were disrupted and repurposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, how spaces were occupied and time both stretched and diminished.READ MORE
NEW/NORMAL?
In an environment structured by longstanding inequalities, what ‘new normals’ are evolving against the backdrop of the continuing phenomenon of COVID-19? The archive material in this gallery asks questions of university strategies and practices, of what has been learned – and forgotten?READ MORE
WELL/BEING?
How has the extended duration of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted on participants’ physical, mental and emotional wellbeing? What are the longer-term implications for individuals and the higher education sector?READ MORE
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CABINET OF CURIOSITIES
A Dear Diary take on the Wunderkammer – cabinet of wonders, once beloved of royalty and aristocracy; products of a highly problematic era of exploration and discovery. Because research data is always messy however much we try to corral it within themes, the cabinet features a small collection of the random, poignant and humorous from participants’ accounts.READ MORE
ENTRANCE
