Anthropology majors study COVID impacts on EKU students

EKU Anthropology Major Rose Johnson teamed up with her twin sister Ella Johnson to document the presence of COVID infrastructure across EKU's campus. The photographs illustrate the ways campus infrastructure shifted to protect students, including room capacity numbers, guidelines on illness, policies for mask wearing and social distancing, as well as the discarded masks and peeling posters that may become the lasting legacy of COVID detritus on campus.

The photographs are part of Rose's independent study on COVID's impacts on EKU students, which she presented at the annual Social Science Undergraduate Research Symposium on April 22, 2021. Rose set out to understand how students were impacted in their academic, social, and work lives, as well as how their perceptions of COVID influenced their behavior. Under the supervision of Anthropology Professor Amanda Green, she conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews with current EKU students.

Alisha Rhymer and Breanna Bowling, Anthropology Majors and Minors respectively, also studied the impacts of COVID on student food insecurity. As part of Professor Green's longitudinal study of food insecurity's impacts on EKU graduates, the two students conducted food life history interviews. Rhymer and Bowling presented their initial findings at the annual Social Science Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Published on May 05, 2021