NYC Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project - Incite at Columbia University

Starting in March 2020, our team of sociologists, oral historians, and anthropologists at Incite and the Columbia Center for Oral History Research began building an archive documenting New York City’s experience of the pandemic.

New York City was the early epicenter of this pandemic in the United States because of its international connections and the local density of its social life. Our archive focuses on New York—a city of neighborhoods—to illuminate and document the social structure of the pandemic.

We’ve noticed that in this crisis people’s perceptions and understandings change daily, sometimes hourly. This is why we started interviewing as soon as we could, in March 2020. Our work builds on our experience developing the September 11, 2001 Oral History Narrative and Memory Project, and combines sociology and oral history to create a rich, composite picture of the struggle against Covid-19 as it evolved over the years that followed.

For this project, we conducted video interviews with narrators as many as three times over the course of 18 months. The voices from these interviews were enriched by written diaries chronicling daily life during the pandemic and survey data helping us understand more about our participants and their social lives.

“The archive bulges with revelations, anecdotes, anxieties, blind spots, big ideas and weird ideas.”

This crisis highlighted structural fault-lines in our society as well as the strength and resilience of our communities, even as our society transforms in ways we do not yet understand. That’s why it was so important for those navigating the post-COVID future to hear the voices of those who lived through this period. Researchers, health workers and advocates, historians, artists, and policymakers will learn from listening to and watching New Yorkers talk about how we made it through this extended crisis.