Hello from Belfast – and welcome to the January edition of the eGraduate.

Welcome to 2022 – and what could prove to be a pivotal year. Will this be the year the pandemic ends – or will it be the year that virtual reality and the metaverse really take off? Will climate change start to impact what we see on supermarket – or library – shelves? We asked four Queen’s experts to look into their crystal balls.

What's next for Covid-19? Will there be more variants? Will the vaccines cope? Will the pandemic become as much a culture war as a medical one? And will the health service have the data and staff it needs to cope? Dr Lindsay Broadbent, research fellow at the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences, gives her thoughts on the evidence here.

Has virtual reality finally reached a tipping point? Is this the year we start living in the metaverse? Futurologist, Dr Ian Pearson (Applied Mathematics and Physics, 1981), makes predictions for a living, and says that aside from all the obvious impacts of the pandemic on technology, there are plenty of surprising ones, too. You can read his take here.

Just how much will food prices rise by? And who will be affected most? Could 2022 be the year of widespread famine? And will the world food supply system be able to cope? Professor Chris Elliott, of the Institute for Global Food Security, considers how the pandemic and climate change will affect the global food supply – and what it means for farmers and shoppers in NI – here.

Are we more connected than ever? Or more alone? Will the pandemic leave permanent marks on our consciousness, or will we forget and move on? Professor Glenn Patterson, author and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, reflects on the implications for culture and books in 2022 here.

Music Event at Queen's 

Thursday 27 January 2022

13:10 - 14:00 GMT

In-person and Online 

Join Dr Kiku Day (PhD ethnomusicology and jinashi shakuhachi player) for an intimate performance at the Sonic Lab. Dr Day is a founding member and served 10 years as Chairperson for the European Shakuhachi Society. Day is presently a research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London and performs across the world.

School of Law Event

Thursday 27 January 2022

16:00 - 17:30 GMT 

Online

Discussion on the police reform after George Floyd. The panel will feature speakers form Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, University of Oxford and Queen's Universtiy Belfast, and will look at the current landscape of police reform and what lessons can be learnt from the Northern Irish experience of radical police reform in the late 1990s.

William J. Clinton Leadership Institute 

Thursday 17 February 2022

13:00 - 14:00 GMT

Online

You are warmly invited to a virtual event with Russell Napier. In this fireside chat, Professor John Turner, Queen's Management School, will interview Russell Napier (Law, 1987), one of the world's leading experts on global financial markets, about his experiences in Asia as well as Asia's future in the global economy.