COVID and Society: an overview of Bennett Institute research

The British Academy has been asked by the Government Office for Science to produce a report on the long-term societal effects and impacts of COVID-19. The desired outcome of the study is that it “should leave us in a position to better understand what societal effects we want to cement, which we want to reverse, and what the trade-offs are.” Through the first phase of the project a number of particular policy areas and cross-cutting analytical themes have been identified. This process of prioritisation established three integrated areas of policy (health and wellbeing, communities, culture and belonging, and knowledge, skills and employment) to be examined using fivecross-cutting analytical themes (governance, trust, cohesion, inequalities, and sustainability). The analysis will also consider dimensions of scale, time and place. This paper highlights how the work of the Bennett Institute addresses some of the areas of policy and the key themes identified by this project.