1
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Which is important. But equally, the next pandemic might be ten years away.

2
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It might be 100 years away. So one thing that every country needs to think about is the building back agenda.

3
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And I so we I haven't thought about this,

4
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but we run surveys in Brazil looking at impacts and I was presenting them about education impacts on an online conference.

5
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And there was a guy talking about earthquakes in Pakistan.

6
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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.

7
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And that was when they look at earthquakes that affected part of Pakistan.

8
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And suddenly children in those regions had to study at home for about four months.

9
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But the same cohort elsewhere in the country went to normal school.

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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.

11
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So for me, the building back agenda is underestimated.

12
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And what we know so far is that inequalities that existed in the world before COVID have been entrenched.

13
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But I think there's a lot to be concerned about, about how much they mean they might be exacerbated from this point on.

14
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And I think that should be one of the sort of the guides of how you prioritise the building back agenda.

15
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And lots of other questions for me about trust in government and all sorts of things that I want to work on.

16
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But I think the building back agenda is super important and just because of its urgency at this moment.

17
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So it's just like the. Naughty question, is it?

18
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I mean, do you think the pandemic has offered opportunities for for work on comparative government that wouldn't have been there otherwise,

19
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in which, as you say, you have I've raised, you know, in some ways a lot of doors for questions to be asked.

20
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Yeah. It's funny, I just research. When we were testing this, you ask me what I had for lunch.

21
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I had lunch with a philosopher and we were talking about this very issue and, um,

22
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he, he was saying that pandemic hasn't really done anything with philosophy.

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It hasn't really opened up any new questions or allowed people to write books finally.

24
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But, uh, you know, the empirical social sciences, this is such a traumatic event that I don't,

25
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I feel a bit uncomfortable putting in opportunity, but, you know, that's why I was asking the question.

26
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But it's been a moments to learn about the world and about societies.

27
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And has the experience changed your attitude or your approach to your work and

28
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all things you'd like to see change in the future of how research is conducted?

29
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Come. I think.

30
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So I also answered this in both a personal and professional way.

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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,

32
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there were days when we were getting 700,000 emails and I had to turn off the ping just

33
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because it was anxiety to make a cup of tea and is painting things just impossible.

34
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So I think personally, I think lots of Oxford academics are used to the feeling of overworking,

35
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but it made me work out what I needed to do for my own well-being and stick to that no matter what.

36
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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.

37
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And then I think in terms of how research is done, it has had, you know, a profound impact on me.

38
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I think the and coming from the natural sciences where research is by default a team sport moving to the social sciences,

39
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where it's by default an individual or a pair or a very small group.

40
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I had the instinct when I moved across that it should be a team sport and it was structured basically.

41
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And I hope that projects like The Tracker make the point of how how many synergies

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there are and how there are things that are only possible when you play as a team.

43
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And the other thing that I think really needs rethinking a little bit.

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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.

45
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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.

46
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They've done it because it's been needed by the world.

47
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And the tracker is a data projects, you know, and creating datasets or writing in really informative Twitter threads.

48
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Sometimes academics have set the record straight on a whole bunch of things.

49
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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.

50
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Good. Anything that I haven't asked you about that you feel I should have done that?

51
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I did. I know you've asked a lot. Oh, it was lovely.

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Thank you.