Some time has passed since we published our first official newsletter – and a lot has changed. The first half of 2020 has been dominated by one topic: COVID-19 and the widespread lockdown of the European Union and countries across the world (with some exceptions).

It is no easy task to engage in historical, sociological and ethnographic research on public spaces in times like these. The corona crisis poses many challenges to the Narcotic City project, and lockdown measures have already had an extensive impact on our work. While we are limited in movement, we are not able to sit around and wait for the pandemic to pass, especially as it has direct consequences for our research. As a result, we decided to expand our second newsletter into a lockdown report, exploring the implications of the current crisis for the people and places at the heart of our project.

You can download our spring 2020 lockdown report here.