Critical Human Security and Public Policy Challenges in a Post-Covid World: UK and South Korea

This ESRC funded project brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the UK and South Korea to contribute to the development of a body of knowledge, academic exchange and collaboration, and dissemination activities focusing on critical human security and public policy challenges in a post-Covid world. The spread and impact of Covid19 since March 2020 has highlighted the integrated nature of communities and different dimensions of life, and how these interact within and across policy spheres. As the health crisis has evolved into an economic, social and fiscal crisis paradoxically the responses to and the impacts of what has been a global pandemic have been highly differentiated and variegated nationally and locally affecting groups of people and places in very different ways. This collaboration will draw on critical human security as the overall comparative, conceptual and analytical framework through which to understand better the complex and integrated policy challenges of the pandemic and sustainable strategies for addressing them as both South Korea and the UK look towards a more digitally connected, post-Covid future. Through multi-stakeholder workshops and the identification of relevant and appropriate indicators and data sources the collaboration will generate knowledge creation and exchange addressing five key dimensions of (in)security: health, economic, environmental and community security as well as personal and political freedom. In establishing relevant comparative indicators and data sources and disseminating knowledge created through a range of different platforms and to different audiences the proposed activities of the collaboration will shed light on the uneven and complex challenges to human security, support inclusive and gendered public policy responses, and create an enduring and sustainable research network.