The Columbia University student COVID-19 oral history collection is comprised of eighteen interviews conducted by students of Professor Ana Paulina Lee’s course Contemporary Civilization II.

Students took the interviews in April and May of 2020, shortly after the pandemic hit New York City, and Columbia University’s courses converted from in-person to online. As such, they offer a snapshot of the understanding of COVID-19 and its social implications in the pandemic’s earliest days.

Access to these COVID-19 oral history transcripts and audio are available online in the Libraries’ Digital Collections to Columbia affiliates and to the public.

An article by Professor Lee and the oral history collections curator, Kimberly Springer, is available via Columbia’s Academic Commons.