Navigating the new normal: Shifting household activity spaces in the UK, Spain and US during the COVID-19 pandemic

This research proposal builds on a recent project which solicited video tours of the homes of people during the COVID-19 pandemic. These videos give an insight into the ways that people in households around the world negotiated the radical restrictions of their activities during the initial lockdown period, and how they reconfigured their domestic spaces to accommodate functions that previously occurred outside the home. The current study aims to build on this project by shifting the focus to the ways that households are now adjusting to the relaxation of lockdown restrictions in the UK, Spain and the USA. We seek to explore the challenges of adjusting to 'the new normal'; the ways that people are orienting to the novel set of social and spatial norms that characterise this crucial transitional period of the pandemic; and the ways that household activity spaces and boundaries are now being redrawn, renegotiated, and extended.