This special issue explores and unpacks the complex temporal, social and scalar relation-ships which are intertwined with contemporary manifestations of mistrust in medicine. We ask what social science and humanities disciplines can offer in relation to wider understandings of the processes driving resistance to and refusal of medical interventions, including but also beyond vaccines. We distil insights derived from diverse spaces of medical encounter, ambivalence and resistance that serve as arenas which generate mistrust. We bring this analysis to deepen an understanding of the frictions and affective relations which exist between vertical and horizontal relations which constitute health systems.

The British Academy continues to publish Open Access monographs that showcase the work of outstanding early career researchers. New titles include The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War, by Jeffrey Whyte; Comparing the Worth of the While in Fiji and Finland, by Matti Eräsaari; and Media, Religion, Citizenship: Transnational Alevi Media and Its Audience, by Kumru Berfin Emre.

In a further bid to expand the accessibility of our publications we are now publishing ebooks of selected titles. Volumes now available as ebooks include Theoretical Linguistics in the Pre-University Classroom, edited by Alice Corr and Anna Pineda; Judicial Independence Under Threat, edited by Dimitrios Giannoulopoulos and Yvonne McDermott; and Imagining Andrew Marvell at 400, edited by Matthew C. Augustine, Giulio J. Pertile, Steven N. Zwicker. Titles that are available as ebooks can be purchased from your preferred ebook retailer.

In November 2021, the British Academy, in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences, convened a roundtable on geographic and historic patterns of health inequalities in the UK. The roundtable followed a request from the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) in June 2021 to explore the geographic factors associated with historically poorer public health outcomes over the last 200 years.

The British Academy was asked by the Government Office for Science to produce an independent review on the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19. This report outlines the evidence across a range of areas, building upon a series of expert reviews, engagement, synthesis and analysis across the SHAPE research community. It shows that COVID-19 has generated a series of social, economic and cultural effects which will have long-term impacts.

The British Academy has undertaken the substantial task of beginning to answer the longer-term question about what the societal impacts of COVID-19 will be and how we address them. This report sets out an interrelated set of nine areas of long-term impact, seven strategic policy goals and five key principles of a facilitative policy environment for 2030. We aim here to provide decision-makers with a sense of how to start to respond to these longer-term impacts based on the current evidence, and how to shape the COVID decade.