It’s been a little over a year since we learned that the National Science Foundation grant supporting the Rituals in the Making project was “terminated, effective immediately.” As we wrote in a recent essay for Anthropology News, just because we lost our funding doesn’t mean we’ve lost our drive to research and write about the lasting effects of pandemic loss on American society.
Category: Dispatches from the Field
March 2026 – Steeped in the Yellows of Early Spring: Rami’s Heart COVID-19 Memorial Sixth Annual Lighting Ceremony
On March 28, 2026, Rituals in the Making traveled to Wall, NJ to attend the sixth annual lighting ceremony hosted by Rami’s Heart COVID-19 Memorial.
The Relentless Bully
Date Posted: March 23, 2026.
In the process of finding her voice as “a writer, observer, critical thinker, resister, and ally,” Dawn is continuing to evolve “as each new story finds its way into existence, continuously changing and transforming.”
Ordinary Necropolitics: Presenting Loss at the 17th International DDD Conference in Utrecht, Netherlands
Date posted: September 19, 2025
The interdisciplinary space of the conference in the Netherlands provided members of the project a chance to present findings, learn from other scholars, and exchange ideas about death, mourning, and memorialization.
When tradition meets crisis: Egyptian Weddings during COVID-19
Date posted: September 9, 2025
Given the plethora of weddings I have attended, I naively thought that weddings were a fixed ceremony, a ritual with a durable sequence that brings two people together.
On Obscurity: Pandemic Memory Work and the National COVID Memorial Wall (UK)
Date posted: August 8, 2025
A reflection on the visibility, values, and demands of pandemic memory work at the UK’s national COVID memorial.
“Compassion and advocacy in the face of COVID”
Date posted: July 29, 2025.
An interview with Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez on adapting care during the pandemic and her commitment to long covid research.
Vignettes of Time: Reflections on the Week COVID Came to Be with Hanaan and Avery
Date posted: March 14, 2025
For Hanaan, COVID began in December when the news began reporting it, working as a volunteer in the ER and seeing people come in droves, fearing they had contracted this virus. But the world officially ‘ended’ when everything in the United States shut down. For Avery, it was a slow trickle, then all at once with her birthday on the 14th of March in Texas – a state that would become contentious in the debate over covid restrictions that came from the community efforts to stop the spread of the virus.
“This was History and we were her unwilling participants.”
Date posted: March 11, 2025
A small time capsule from GW Anthropology’s department captured the day in March 2020 when the campus stood still.
“All of Us Were Willing to Run into the Fire”
Date Posted: Feb 2, 2025.
An interview with Dr. Ashwin Shankar on Forging Community Bonds and Pediatric Healthcare during the COVID-19 Pandemic