Our academics have been busily contributing to debates and action on global and public health
Queen Mary staff have been engaging with organisations, the media and wider public about key aspects of global and public health.
Members of Wolfson's Global Health Unit of the Wolfson Institute, Natasha O'Sullivan and Heather McMullen hosted an event at the Bonn Climate Change Conference in June 2023. The event 'Achieving Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Climate Justice' took place in June in collaboration with the Danish Family Planning Association, and the Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women. You can watch the event recording below.
Eight representatives from Queen Mary University of London attended the United Nations Climate Conference (COP27) in Egypt, helping to advance the implementation of effective climate change policies. Queen Mary’s COP27 representatives included Professor Chris Griffiths, Professor of Primary Care, Wolfson Institute of Population Health. His blog Reflections on COP27 talks about COP27 as a catalyst for change and how the climate crisis won’t be solved by people working in silos, scattered across the globe.
Dr Heather McMullen, a speaker at COP26, led Queen Mary’s week 2 delegates and built on her work into sexual and reproductive health and rights and its intersection with climate change and environmental sustainability. She leads on a partnership agreement between Queen Mary and the United Nations Population Fund. This year, with colleagues, she has analysed 111 climate policies and presented the findings to a global audience at COP27.
Her work explores the intersection of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) with climate change and environmental sustainability. She also leads on a partnership agreement between Queen Mary and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). At COP26, Dr McMullen underlined the importance of putting sexual health and reproductive rights at the heart of the debate regarding climate policy and health system.
Heather McMullen participated on various panels at the COP26 summit. You can watch one of the panels on ‘Advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights for climate change adaptation and resilience’ featuring Heather:
Her contributions were quoted in press articles by Huffington Post reporting on Gender Day COP26 entitled Why the Climate Crisis Causes Women and Girls More Suffering and by VICE World News on ‘It’s Not Safe: Women Feeling Climate-Related Crises Demand Better Access to Contraception’
Heather also gave a keynote lecture to the European parliamentarians on Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Rights and Climate Change:
Dr McMullen will be speaking at Barts and The London Sexual and Reproductive Health Society Event and giving a guest lecture at Cambridge Political Ecology Group in May, then presenting a paper at Reproductive Futures Conference in Finland in June. She is also leading on an upcoming conference in September.
Doreen Montag is giving a roundtable presentation on Health Centred Environmental Governance within the topic of Amazonian Governance at an event in May organised by Brussels School of Governance in collaboration with Queen Mary.
Dr Montag is also co-organiser of The Queen Mary Latin America Network, which is a network of scholars working in and on Latin America and the Caribbean region. The network runs events and projects linked to the region.
As part of a documentary by the Economist, Dr Jon Kennedy talks about the rise in mistrust of authorities and hesitancies about vaccines, outlining the link between levels of electoral support for populist parties and distrust of vaccines.
An article by Ensayo General (in Spanish) extensively discusses Doreen Montag and her colleague, Marco Barboza’s essay on ‘Melancholy and Balance: A 21st Century Homeostasis’. This considers the relationships and exchanges between critical processes such as the destruction of natural resources and democracy, the circumstances and impacts of breaking the links between nature and society, and opportunities to return to the original balance.