HEALth and ENvironment in Africa and Europe

Objective

HEALENAE offers a cross-continental, innovative, interdisciplinary, and multi-sectoral anthropological approach to pressing interrelated health and environmental challenges across Africa and Europe. Concerns about interlinkages between environment and health and the inter-continental connectedness between these problems have intensified since the last pandemic. These include: rising temperatures; proliferation of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases; changes in nutrition; increase in chronic conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases; chemical intensification of agriculture; and pollution, including extraction of minerals that poison local African environments while providing batteries for global “green” markets. Addressing the complex intersection of health and social consequences of globalised production and environmental change requires new kinds of social scientists, versed in environmental and health issues, able to think and work across sectors and continents. HEALENAE brings together anthropological, one health, environmental, global and regional approaches to address these problems. Seven universities—Aarhus (DK), Cape Town (SA), Edinburgh (UK), Leuven (B) Makerere (UG), Nairobi (KE), and Oslo (NO)—will offer 15 double or joint degrees for ESRs, all of them between African and European universities. Through ethnographic fieldwork, exploring specific connections between health and environment across both continents, the programme will provide insights into, and enable future mitigations of, challenges such as changing disease patterns, climate and environmental changes, shifting population demographics, accelerated urbanisation, growing inequality, emerging epidemics, changing gender and generational dynamics. The ESRs will be trained in interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches, engaging with civil society organisations and using multimodal and interactive outlets to maximize the dissemination and impact of their findings.