Scotland’s COVID-19 vaccine memories to be captured in new national project

The COVID-19 vaccine has become a symbol of biomedical success and the beginning of a “post-COVID” era characterised by remembrance in the form of official memorials, documentaries, fiction and policy initiatives that seek to commemorate the pandemic’s “past”.

However, dominant COVID-19 vaccine memories in the UK often overlook specific experiences of the Scottish context, as well as marginalising the experiences of some groups, such as those medically unable to receive the vaccine and those who suffered significant side effects.

This interdisciplinary project will employ a mixed-methods approach to collect and analyse individual and collective memories of the COVID-19 vaccine in Scotland. Researchers will collaborate with external partners - the National Museum of Scotland, Lothian Health Service Archive and the Wee Museum of Memory.

Building on sociological studies of memory, the research engages with how society and individuals remember the past, and how this relates to identity, power and social change. 

Thus, memories of the COVID-19 vaccine are not just about the vaccine, they are about broader issues of health, society, and what it means to be safe. For this reason, the project will compare how societies at large remember and how individuals with complex experiences of the vaccine remember it. 

The project will focus on three interrelated questions:

First, what are the collective memories of the COVID-19 vaccine the public are being encouraged to remember in the UK?

Second, what are the individual memories of those ‘missing’ in public remembrances of the COVID-19 vaccine?

And finally, how are can COVID-19 vaccine memories be mobilised for the future in ways that are more diverse and meaning for the future?

In order to answer these questions, researchers will use Scotland as a case study and develop interdisciplinary frameworks to understand how collective and individual memories of the COVID-19 vaccine are made, circulated, and contested, and to make visible the marginalised individual, collective and the regionalised voices of Scotland.

They will look at how exhibitions, documentaries, and books among others remember the COVID-19 vaccine; and compare this with the memories of two specific groups of people: those who were not able to be vaccinated because of a pre-existing health condition, and those who were vaccinated, but who experienced significant side effects.

The projected impacts extend beyond academia through collaboration with museums, archives, and community organisations to develop inclusive and participatory forms of public remembrance. 

By foregrounding diverse voices and experiences, the project will help shape how the pandemic’s legacy is represented, contested, and carried forward into the future.

Usher Institute

University of Strathclyde

Jaime Garcia-Iglesias

PhD opportunities

National Museum of Scotland

Lothian Health Service Archive

Wee Museum of Memory

Leverhulme Trust