Pandemic Perspectives

An innovative collaboration between two state institutions guided Public Health students in capturing and preserving important pandemic insights for the future. 

Listen to brief clips from four of the Pandemic Perspectives oral history interviews on the WSHS YouTube channel:

Read excerpts and view video clips from the students’ work at this online exhibit devoted to the stories, photographs, and audio collected as part of this project:

Washington State Historical Society staff worked with associate teaching professor Anjulie Ganti, who has master’s degrees in public health and social work, and teaching assistant Nola Liu, a graduate student working toward a master of urban planning, at the University of Washington School of Public Health. Under the guidance of these partners, 24 students in their final year of the Public Health/Global Health major documented and preserved stories of the pandemic through oral histories, artifacts, and photovoices (images with captions that express points of view).

This unique student project provided the opportunity for Historical Society to add voices not traditionally represented to its permanent collection, thus ensuring a broader range of authentic experiences are included in the historic records.

As the inaugural exhibition related to this global health crisis, Pandemic Perspectives offers the first look into these diverse and exciting new additions to the WSHS collection. You’ll come away with a clearer, more diverse understanding of the reach and ramifications of this global crisis as it played out right here at home.

The students’ work will be added to the permanent collection at the Washington State Historical Society and preserved for generations to come.

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Our thanks: WSHS exhibitions and programs are generously supported by Columbia Bank, Humanities Washington, KNKX, The Murdock Foundation, the Port of Tacoma, and our members.

More about the WSHS/UW School of Public Health partnership

In the winter and spring of 2021, museum professionals from the WSHS collections and education teams co-taught in a virtual classroom with a UW course instructor and teaching assistant for the capstone course for the Public Health/Global Health major. They educated students about museum collections and provided instruction about how to gather oral histories. The students implemented a public service project with the goal of capturing individual pandemic experiences, notably including the voices of people of color whose communities were disproportionately affected by COVID-19.

Each student interviewed a community member, relative, or friend, exploring their individual experiences during the ongoing global health crisis. In many cases, the interviewee also contributed a photo or an artifact representing their experience. The students then interviewed each other, contributed artifacts, and created photovoices about their experiences.

The result of this collaboration is a new collection–a legacy for this group of students–including oral histories, artifacts, photographs, and written work that speaks specifically to the individual impacts of COVID-19 in our community.

The Washington State Historical Society is grateful to the University of Washington’s School of Public Health, Anjuli Ganti, Nola Liu, the participating students, and all those who were interviewed, for the opportunity to capture these stories for future reflection and research.