Chemistry & Computer Science
University Research Professor Steve Rick (Chemistry) and Associate Professor Chris Summa (Computer Science) are part of a global research consortium studying ways to inhibit the virus that causes COVID-19. Learn more in the UNO Press Release.
Economics & Finance
Gregory Price (Professor and faculty affiliate of Urban Entrepreneurship and Policy Institute) served as a guest editor and wrote an introduction for a special issue of the Journal of Economics, Race and Policy on "COVID-19 and Its Impact on Racial/Ethnic Groups."
Dr. Price also published an article in January 2021 titled "Was trade openness with China an initial driver of cross-country human coronavirus infections?" in the Journal of Economic Studies.
Educational Leadership, Counseling, Health Promotion & Human Performance
Assistant Professor Christopher Belser published an article, "Conceptualizing COVID-19-Related Career Concerns Using Bioecological Systems: Implications for Career Practice," in the Special Issue: COVID-19 Impact on Career Development of The Career Development Quarterly. Read the article here.
Assistant Professor Marc Bonis published an article in the Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research entitled “Physical Activity May be a Major Deterrent of Severe Health Consequences from COVID-19: An Annotated
Summary of Physical Activity and COVID-19 Research.”
Associate Professor Carlen McLin has submitted an article to the Southern African Institute of International Affairs and the Centre for International Governance, titled “Africa and COVID-19: An Interdisciplinary Literature Review and Policy Recommendations.”
History and Philosophy
The Midlo Center New Orleans has partnered with Arizona State University to create A Journal of the Plague Year, a publicly sourced digital global COVID-19 archive. Midlo's Co-Directors, Professor Mary Niall Mitchell and Associate Professor Connie Atkinson, are curators along with colleagues from other universities on the project. Find information specific to the New Orleans collection here.
Marc Landry, Associate Director of Center Austria and Assistant Professor of history, reports that Center Austria’s academic journal, Contemporary Austrian Studies, will devote volume 31 (due out in 2022) to the theme of "Disasters and Catastrophes in Austria" as a way to gain historical perspective on the current pandemic.
Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Administration
Assistant Professor Han Chen has two research projects related to COVID-19 currently underway: one is about restaurant consumers' dining behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the other is on restaurant employees' fear of COVID-19 and their emotional exhaustion. Both projects are still in progress and will be submitted for journal publication later this summer.
Management and Marketing
Associate Professor of Marketing Elyria Kemp, Professor of Economics Gregory Price, and Assistant Professor of Management Nicole Fuller co-authored a paper, "African Americans and COVID-19: Beliefs, Behaviors and Vulnerability to Infection," exploring the attitudes of African Americans in New Orleans toward COVID-19, social and normative conditions which affect individual behaviors, as well as access to healthcare services and COVID-19 testing. The work has been published in the International Journal of Healthcare Management and can be read here.
Associate Professor of Marketing Elyria Kemp examined the unique emotional distress experienced during the coronavirus outbreak by consumers and its impact on consumption behavior. This research resulted in an article, "Preparing for a crisis: examining the influence of fear and anxiety on consumption compliance," published in the Journal of Consumer Marketing.
Associate Professor of Marketing Elyria Kemp and Assistant Professor of Marketing Dong-Jun Min partnered to examine the role that feelings of gratitude play in the emotional health and well-being of individuals during the coronavirus outbreak. Their project investigates how efforts to manage anxiety can influence prosocial behavior and the social marketing efforts of the federal government in controlling the spread of the virus, as well as the implications for addressing mental health issues and social marketing messaging during catastrophic occurrences. The resultant article was published in the Journal of Consumer Marketing and can be found here.
Planning and Urban Studies
Jean Brainard Boebel Endowed Professor of Historic Preservation Fallon Aidoo is leading a Working Group of the Natural Hazards Center that is researching Commercial Anchors of Majority-Minority Communities and advising funders of business relief and commercial revitalizations. The Working Group is supported with a seed grant/sub-grant of the NSF-funded Social Science Extreme Events Research Network (administered at UC Boulder’s Natural Hazards Center).
Associate Professor Michelle Thompson is working with the “Data for Good” program of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth on a project that entails evaluating the impacts of COVID-19 on “New Orleans Main Streets and Economic Corridors.”
Professor of Research and Director of UNO-CHART Monica Farris is a member of a working group funded by CONVERGE called “Operational, Ethical, and Situational Research Challenges in COVID-19.” This group is focused on the “doing” of research during COVID-19. It will examine the operational, ethical, and situational challenges faced by researchers in times of pandemic. Due to COVID-19, new takes on old challenges of quick-response disaster social science research are emerging. The group will identify novel unanticipated challenges related to working in a societal setting interrupted by COVID-19 and explore strategies to overcome such challenges.
Associate Professor of Research Pam Jenkins is a lead on the CONVERGE-funded working group “Living Pandemic Life on the Margins of Society: Voices from the Field.” This working group will collect stories from a diverse people who live on the margins of market-based society, including Native Americans and African Americans. For them, fashioning meaningful lives amidst this malevolent disordering must occur absent many of the securities of middle-class life. This group seeks to examine how these groups are coping with a new normal of day-to-day anguish.
Hoang Tao, a CHART Graduate Research Assistant and PhD student in Urban Studies, is volunteering with the City-Assisted Evacuation program. As a former Evacuteer Evacuspot captain, Hoang will assist in preventing the spreading of COVID-19 during the potential evacuation of an estimated of 35,000 New Orleans residents ahead of dangerous hurricanes. He is currently being trained to assist with the implementation of new COVID-19 protocols related to distributing personal protective equipment (e.g., N95 masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, etc.), social distancing evacuees, disinfecting fomite surfaces and other preventative procedures to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Political Science
Assistant Professor Steven Mumford worked with the Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) during Spring 2020 on a survey of nonprofit leaders in the region on how their organizations are impacted by the pandemic, primarily in finances and services. The resultant report can be found here. It was adapted into an article for the International Journal of Public Administration discussing nonprofit resilience to compound hurricane-pandemic threat. Dr. Mumford also worked with the Greater New Orleans Funders Network in Spring 2020 on a follow up survey of major foundations in the area on how they are impacted. For more information, check out the UNO Press Release.
In Spring 2021, Dr. Mumford is conducting another survey of regional nonprofits on behalf of the Greater New Orleans Foundation. This survey is a roughly one year follow up of how the sector is exhibiting resilience to the pandemic and other changes over the past year, and also examines racial and gender equity in the sector’s leadership. This work will result in a report by May 2021, as well as additional journal articles.
Psychology
Department Chair and Associate Professor Elliott Beaton and Assistant Professor Sarah Black are seeking studying the impacts of COVID19 on parents and children in New Orleans. They made a call to the public for participants.
Yulia Kotelnikova (Assistant Professor) and Matt Scalco (Assistant Professor) conducted a study on the impact of the pandemic stay-at-home order on mental health and have collected data from over 1000 participants. The goal of this study is to examine the impact of isolation due to federally mandated measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. We are focusing on the most affected states that have been under the stay-at-home order since the middle of March, 2020.
"How Government Leaders Violated their Epistemic Duties During the SARS-Cov-2 Crisis," Chris W. Surprenant, co-authored with Jason Brennan (Georgetown) and Eric Winsberg (South Florida), Kennedy Institute Journal of Ethics (September 2020).
"COVID-19 and Pre-Trial Detention," Chris W. Surprenant, Mercatus Center Policy Brief, published online 3/30/2020.
"The Impact of Political Ideology on Concern and Behavior During COVID-19" co-authored by institute faculty Eric van Holm, Jake Monaghan, Dan Shahar and J.P. Messina, and Chris W. Surprenant, currently under review.
"The Effect of Social Distancing On The Spread of Novel Coronavirus: Estimates From Linked State-Level Infection And American Time Use Survey Data," co-authored by institute faculty Gregory Price and Eric van Holm, currently under review.
"Neighborhood Conditions and the Initial Outbreak of COVID-19: The Case of Louisiana," Eric van Holm, co-authored with Christopher Wyczalkowski (Georgia State) and Prentiss Dantzler (Georgia State).
