Dr Edward (“Jed”) Stevenson
Anthropology
Jed's research explores hunger and thirst, health inequalities, and the political ecologies of health, with a particular focus on food and water insecurity in East Africa and Central Asia.
For updates about our online events and newsletter, subscribe to our mailing list on JiscMail: WEATHER-CLIMATE-HEALTH.
How are environments rendered stable through weather-forecasting, climate control, and
seasonal taxonomies? What are the health, bodily, and emotional impacts of this
ordering work and its undoing in times of climate crisis? And how is this
“dis/ordering” felt and expressed in terms of climate emotions, deliberations, and new
measures of distress?
With the emergence of "weird weather" and "ecological anxieties" accelerated by climate
change, the relationships between weather, climate, health and well-being are coming
out of joint. Our research within this strand explores the health impacts of this
emergent dislocation (and their affective, cultural and socio-material aspects),
bridging the gap between environmental and medical humanities.
Co-leads
Dr Angela Marques Filipe
Sociology
Angela examines the social dimensions of health, mental health, and wellbeing, tracing how biomedical and neuroscientific concepts circulate in everyday life and shape experiences of diagnosis, care, and emerging eco-anxieties.
Dr Maximilian Gregor Hepach
Geography
Maximilian is a historical and cultural geographer of climate change whose work traces how unprecedented weather is sensed, medicalised, and governed.
Weather, Climate & Health
Events
Upcoming and recent online, hybrid, and in-person events.
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The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea
with David N. Livingstone
An online interview with David N. Livingstone on his book The Empire of Climate: A History of an Idea, followed by audience Q&A, tracing how climate has been used to explain everything from imperial power and economic change to bodily disorders and the modern psyche.
Co-organised with the Geographies of Life research cluster. -
Seasonal Bodies: Weather, Movement, and Wellbeing
with Antonia Hodgson & Hester Parr (discussant: Maximilian Hepach)
A hybrid roundtable examining how seasonal rhythms—from summer heat to winter darkness—shape everyday practices, moods, and collective ways of living, focusing on the sensory, affective, and social dimensions of moving through seasonal environments and their implications for health and climate adaptation.
Co-organised with the Geographies of Life research cluster and The Moving Bodies Lab (IMH). -
Air, Weather and Multispecies Encounters in the British Tuberculosis Sanatoria
with Clare Hickman
A talk on "Intersections in Medical and Environmental Humanities: Air, Weather and Multispecies Encounters in the British Tuberculosis Sanatoria", examining the experience of weather and animals, including birds, in the early twentieth century British tuberculosis sanatorium, drawing on archival materials created by Canadian artist Emily Carr and oral histories from two British sanatorium facilities.
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The open body: What can we learn from meteorological medicine?
with Eva Horn
An online talk on what contemporary debates about climate and health can learn from historical traditions of meteorological medicine and ideas of the "open body" attuned to atmospheric conditions.
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The English indoors and the making of the modern environment
with Vladimir Janković
An online talk on how ideas of "the English indoors" have shaped the making of the modern environment, tracing histories of domestic space, comfort, and environmental control.
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Geographies of Heat
Organised by Marijn Nieuwenhuis (Geography)
An in-person roundtable at Durham University exploring the geographies of heat, bringing together perspectives on how heat is distributed, experienced, and governed across different environments.
Co-organised with the Geographies of Life research cluster. -
Overcoming the sad affects of the energy transition
with Benoit Dillet
A talk by Benoit Dillet on "Overcoming the sad affects of the energy transition", marking the launch of Transition Imaginaries: Contested Temporalities, Affective Politics, and Decolonial Technology, and exploring how climate futures, eco-anxieties, grief, and joyful collective experimentations shape the politics of energy transition.
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Losing Ground: Planetary Instability and a Life Tenacious
with Martin Savransky
A talk examining planetary upheaval and environmental disaster, exploring the stakes of a kind of pessimism intent not on making things better but on living tenaciously while one can.
What is the Institute for Medical Humanities (IMH)?
The Institute for Medical Humanities is a research institute at Durham University in the UK that coordinates and supports research on the lived experience of health and illness, with a focus on "hidden experience"—health experiences that are difficult to measure, discuss, or recognize, including those affecting marginalized communities.
The IMH employs interdisciplinary methods drawing from English Studies, Theology, History, Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Sport and Exercise Science, and Psychology to investigate topics spanning trauma, post-natal depression, addiction, deafness, dreams, hallucinations, touch, memory, weather, menopause, and anxiety.
The institute believes a medical humanities approach can shed new light on these hidden experiences to improve health policy and practice and benefit the lives of communities and individuals. The IMH delivers the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, funded by Wellcome, which brings together researchers, people with lived experience, and practitioners to develop experimental approaches to health challenges.
Weather, Climate & Health is one of six interdisciplinary research themes supported by the Institute from 2025 to 2027. For more information, please visit our website: Research Themes.
Mailing list
Our JiscMail list is the main way we share news from the Weather, Climate & Health theme. By subscribing you will receive announcements about upcoming online, hybrid, and in-person events, as well as occasional roundups of recordings, publications, and collaborative opportunities.
If you are interested in how weather, climate, health, and environmental humanities come together in research and practice, we invite you to join: WEATHER-CLIMATE-HEALTH.