PJP Home | The Pandemic Journaling Project

Usually, history is written only by the powerful. When the history of COVID-19 is written, let's make sure that doesn't happen.

Since May 2020, the Pandemic Journaling Project has given ordinary people a place to chronicle and preserve their pandemic experiences. In our first phase, PJP-1, more than 1,800 people in 55 countries have created nearly 27,000 individual journal entries—for themselves, and for the history books.

In Summer 2022, we launched our second phase, PJP-2. In PJP-2, we will continue recording the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in our lives—but instead of weekly journaling, we’ll reach out just 4 times a year.

Make sure what you and your family are experiencing is not forgotten. Join PJP-2, and record your pandemic story. You don't need a computer—and you don't even need to write to participate. All you need is a phone. It's easy, and it will take as little as 15 minutes every 3 months.

Join the project

Once every three months, you'll get an email or text message with a link. We'll ask a few questions, then it's your chance to talk about your experiences. You can create journal entries in 3 ways:

Write it down.

Record yourself talking.

Take a photo of something important to you and write, or talk, about it.

We'll save your journal entries in the archive we're continuing to build.

Before you start, we’ll ask some questions about you, your health and wellbeing, your views, and the impact of COVID-19 on you and those you care about. Each time we reach out, we'll ask a few more questions, right before you start your journal entries. Your answers, together with your journal entries, will be preserved as a digital archive along with the materials collected in PJP-1. They will help researchers learn how different people experience the pandemic, identify challenges in our world’s pandemic response, and work toward solutions.

People who journaled with PJP before May 2022 can obtain a copy of their journals by emailing us at pandemicjournalingproject@gmail.com.

Join the project

The Pandemic Journaling Project

Your story matters ...

Here’s how it works.