IGDC Forum: Urbanisation and Health Network

Speakers:

• Joshua Kirshner is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Environment and Geography. His interests lie in urban development, energy, climate planning, migration and sustainable societies. He is co-PI on the project, ‘A political-economic analysis of electricity grid access histories and futures in Mozambique (POLARIZE)’, Applied Research Programme on Energy and Economic Growth (EEG), funded by UK Aid. He is also co-investigator in ‘Community Energy and the Sustainable Energy Transition in Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique (CESET),’ a three-year UKRI-GCRF-funded project.
• Dr Mary Abboah-Offei is a Research Fellow in the Department of Health Sciences: Mary is a nurse by profession and completed her PhD at King's College London, which focused on the development of community-based person-centred interventions for people living with HIV/AIDS. Mary currently works at the University of York on the Urban CHPS Project and the Nairobi Childcare Community of Practice in Ghana and Nairobi respectively. 
• Steve Cinderby is a Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute centre based in the Dept. of Environment & Geography which he joined in 1991. He has a background in Geographic Information Systems and community engagement. His research focuses on community resilience, urbanisation issues - including green infrastructure and mobility, and their links to wellbeing. He co-leads the SEI initiative City Health and Wellbeing investigating how rapidly growing cities in the global south are affecting the wellbeing of residents, and how this interacts with the overall health of city systems. He has recently been exploring the use of creative methods to improve inclusion in environmental decision making."
• Dr Adam Vaughan is a Postdoctoral Researcher based in the Department of Chemistry’s Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories. Adam completed his PhD at the University of York, focusing on measuring emission rates of nitrogen oxides over London from a low-flying research aircraft. He is currently working on an ERC project assessing ozone loss to the sea-surface. His interests lie in determining sources of air pollution in complex environments, such as urban cities.
• Dr Kelly Redeker is a Lecturer in the Department of Biology: Kelly currently focuses on ecological function, the use of volatile metabolites across a range of processes and systems and the impacts of land-use change. His background includes degrees in Chemistry, Oceanography and Earth System Science.  Kelly has successfully applied for a Newton Fund project, in collaboration with York-based Prof. James Chong and Dr Richard Friend and Nepal-based ISET-Nepal, entitled “Do we really know what is best for sewage?”, which explores how waste treatment in Kathmandu, Nepal can provide sustainable, equitable energy and clean water.
• Dr Noemia Siqueira is a health economics research associate at the Department of Health Sciences:  She has more than five years’ experience in the health economics of infectious disease in developing countries and has been working on protocols to evaluate how patient-centred interventions can be a key strategy to alleviate the economic burden of health care on vulnerable populations. Further information about the ARISE consortium can be found on their webpage.
• Professor Henrice Altink is a Professor of modern history, who specialises in the Caribbean. She has published widely on inequalities of gender, race and class in Jamaica from slavery to the present. Much of her recent research is interdisciplinary, including work on health inequalities in the Caribbean. She has published on mental health, nutrition and TB control in Jamaica, and has led a British Academy-funded network (2014-2016) on public health in the Caribbean and Latin America. More recently, she has been working with ecologists from York and other universities to explore historical processes behind environmental degradation in the circum-Caribbean.
• Dr Jessica Thorn is a Namibian social-ecological systems scientist with a background in ecology and human geography. She is a researcher at the Department of Environment and Geography, University and holds a Climate Research 4 Development and African Women in Climate Change fellowship at the African Climate and Development Initiative. She uses probabilistic modelling and scenario analysis to measure the impacts of development on land-use change and biodiversity. Currently, Jessica is leading a project looking at climate and ecological infrastructure for climate adaptation in peri-urban settlements in Kenya, Tanzania and Namibia. Concurrently, she works on a collaborative capacity-building project, using participatory scenario planning to measure the potential impacts of Chinese foreign direct investment in transportation corridors. 

Chairs

• Dr Helen Elsey is an Associate Professor of Global Public Health in the Department of Health Sciences, the University of York.  Her research focuses on urban health in low-income countries, in particular issues of gender and equity in relation to health risk and behaviour and the development and evaluation of complex public health interventions to improve the health of disadvantaged populations. Current work includes testing novel survey methods to improve the representation of the urban poor and understandings of urban poverty; systems research to strengthen the role of city governments to address health inequities and developing interventions to improve health and reduce injuries in urban slums
• Dr Jo Rose is a lecturer in Humanitarian Affairs and Development and is the Programme Leader of the MSc in International Humanitarian Affairs (MIHA). Jo has worked intensively in complex political emergencies including Afghanistan, Liberia, Uganda, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. Jo focuses on understanding community and local stakeholder engagement in humanitarian responses and development programmes. Most recently she has worked on urban resilience in Nepal; promoting resilience and livelihoods in refugee camps in Jordan, Uganda and the State of Palestine; and community approaches to water waste in the Mekong and Jordan river basins.

_{Image by A MH from Pixabay}