Which is important. But equally, the next pandemic might be ten years away.
It might be 100 years away. So one thing that every country needs to think about is the building back agenda.
And I so we I haven't thought about this,
but we run surveys in Brazil looking at impacts and I was presenting them about education impacts on an online conference.
And there was a guy talking about earthquakes in Pakistan.
And I did think, what on earth are you doing on this panel? But what he was there to show, know, to discuss is stuck with me ever since.
And that was when they look at earthquakes that affected part of Pakistan.
And suddenly children in those regions had to study at home for about four months.
But the same cohort elsewhere in the country went to normal school.
Four months of study at home. After going back to school by the time that they were 18, added up to two years of lost learning.
So for me, the building back agenda is underestimated.
And what we know so far is that inequalities that existed in the world before COVID have been entrenched.
But I think there's a lot to be concerned about, about how much they mean they might be exacerbated from this point on.
And I think that should be one of the sort of the guides of how you prioritise the building back agenda.
And lots of other questions for me about trust in government and all sorts of things that I want to work on.
But I think the building back agenda is super important and just because of its urgency at this moment.
So it's just like the. Naughty question, is it?
I mean, do you think the pandemic has offered opportunities for for work on comparative government that wouldn't have been there otherwise,
in which, as you say, you have I've raised, you know, in some ways a lot of doors for questions to be asked.
Yeah. It's funny, I just research. When we were testing this, you ask me what I had for lunch.
I had lunch with a philosopher and we were talking about this very issue and, um,
he, he was saying that pandemic hasn't really done anything with philosophy.
It hasn't really opened up any new questions or allowed people to write books finally.
But, uh, you know, the empirical social sciences, this is such a traumatic event that I don't,
I feel a bit uncomfortable putting in opportunity, but, you know, that's why I was asking the question.
But it's been a moments to learn about the world and about societies.
And has the experience changed your attitude or your approach to your work and
all things you'd like to see change in the future of how research is conducted?
Come. I think.
So I also answered this in both a personal and professional way.
I think personally there's been so much work and so much urgency that literally I could not have slept if I you know, you know,
there were days when we were getting 700,000 emails and I had to turn off the ping just
because it was anxiety to make a cup of tea and is painting things just impossible.
So I think personally, I think lots of Oxford academics are used to the feeling of overworking,
but it made me work out what I needed to do for my own well-being and stick to that no matter what.
Even if, you know, heads of state literally want to talk to me, sometimes it be like, No, I need to go for a walk at some point today.
And then I think in terms of how research is done, it has had, you know, a profound impact on me.
I think the and coming from the natural sciences where research is by default a team sport moving to the social sciences,
where it's by default an individual or a pair or a very small group.
I had the instinct when I moved across that it should be a team sport and it was structured basically.
And I hope that projects like The Tracker make the point of how how many synergies
there are and how there are things that are only possible when you play as a team.
And the other thing that I think really needs rethinking a little bit.
Is the credit system so often that people who's not just in the social sciences, but people who've done sequencing and so on, have been post-docs.
They've been people who have been very insecure stages of their career, and they have done work which doesn't may or may not lead to papers.
They've done it because it's been needed by the world.
And the tracker is a data projects, you know, and creating datasets or writing in really informative Twitter threads.
Sometimes academics have set the record straight on a whole bunch of things.
It doesn't get you anywhere in terms of career review boards, that kind of thing, and I think that needs some consideration at the moment.
Good. Anything that I haven't asked you about that you feel I should have done that?
I did. I know you've asked a lot. Oh, it was lovely.
Thank you.