Close
Seminar
series event

Discrimination and racism during the Coronavirus outbreak

LSHTM is hosting a panel discussion in response to increasing reports in UK and international media of racial harassment and abuse towards Chinese and East Asian communities, as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak.

coronavirus
Credit: Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM

The event will provide space for discussion as well as information how to get advice and support.

Speakers

  • Jabez Lam (Manager, Hackney Chinese Community Services): Jabez has been a community worker and activist on Chinese community affairs for over 30 years and is the founder of 5 Chinese community centres in the UK. Among his numerous acts of activism, he led a high-profile community campaign in response to the false allegations against the Chinese community as the direct source of the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001. The false allegations began with misleading reports by the media of the UK government following up on a lead of a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle being the original source of the outbreak.
  • Leesa Lin (Assistant Professor, LSHTM): Leesa is a social scientist with comprehensive training in implementation science and evaluation, health systems, communication, global health, social epidemiology, and behaviour sciences. A primary focus of her work has been to identify challenges, inequalities and resilience experienced by at-risk and disadvantaged populations, as well as social and behavioural interventions to address them during large-scale public health emergencies such as the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, 2009/2010 H1N1 pandemic, 2010 Boston Water Crisis, 2013 MERS outbreaks, and the current COVID-19. Leesa is currently serving as an Expert in Preparedness and Emergency Risk Communication on the Advisory Committee for the China Non-Profit Organization Consortium for COVID-19 and on the Social Science Research Working Group for the WHO Blueprint for 2019 novel Coronavirus Global R&D Preparedness.
  • Rich Poolman (Hate Crime Co-ordinator, Central East Basic Command Unit, Metropolitan Police Service (Tower Hamlets & Hackney)): Rich has been a police officer in the Metropolitan Police Service for 18 years, the majority spent working on emergency response teams in various parts of London. He joined the role as Hate Crime Officer in July 2019, to promote Hate Crime Awareness across communities and Safer Neighbourhood Teams ultimately to increase victim confidence.   
  • Clare Matysova (Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Manager, LSHTM): Clare has been working in equality, diversity and inclusion related roles within higher education for the past 12 years. Before joining the LSHTM in December 2019, she was responsible for project managing the University of East London’s successful Athena SWAN and Race Equality submissions, supporting departments with their approach to EDI and Athena SWAN as well as various other initiatives such as tackling bullying and harassment both in staff and student contexts. She is currently also researching on gender equality and exploring the impact of the UK’s shared parental leave policy from the perspective of couple’s decision-making.

Moderator

  • Edmond Ng (Senior Statistical Analyst, LSHTM)

Edmond is a statistician with research interests in burden of disease estimation, pharmacoepidemiology and multilevel modelling. He has previously served in academia as well as in different governmental settings in Hong Kong and the UK. He is currently the Senior Statistical Analyst for the Global Burden of Disease Independent Advisory Committee and a panel member of the Scientific Review Committee for The Health Improvement Network (THIN). Edmond is based in the Director's Office at the LSHTM.

Video

If you are unable to attend this lecture, follow the link below to watch it live or afterwards:

Watch the session 

Admission

Admission
No registration required. Seats available on first come, first served basis.

Contact

Contact